Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

23 Out of the Darkness: The Game Emerges Bat and ball games were probably a common feature of agrarian communities in medieval Europe, but it was not until 1745, a year after the codified laws of cricket, that the first game of cricket between women was recorded. The Reading Mercury reported a match ‘between eleven maids of Bramley and eleven maids of Hambleton, dressed all in white.’ The Bramley maids were said to have played with blue ribbons in their hair, and the Hambleton with red. Matches like these were not uncommon in villages and garden parties in the South of England over the course of the next century, usually played between ‘maidens’ and married women, and could even attract large crowds. In 1768 a tournament in Sussex drew nearly 3,000 spectators from nearby villages, and was customarily accompanied by heavy amounts of drinking and gambling. Women’s cricket matches in the 18th and early-19th centuries may have been jovial, sporadic and largely uncompetitive, but their impact on the development of the sport was profound. The invention of roundarm bowling was the serendipitous brainchild of Christina Willes in 1807, whose large dress prevented her from bowling underarm. Imbued by her ingenuity, her brother John Willes (1778-1852) quickly claimed the technique for his own when playing in Kent, and this new style eventually spread across the country. An undercurrent of informal women’s cricket doubtlessly existed throughout the century. Other famous male cricketers, such as W.G. Grace, were said to have been coached by their mothers or played with their sisters, but these women are rarely noted in histories of the game. 9 Although novelty matches continued intermittently in the 19th century, they became less common after the late 1830s. Cricket and other strenuous activities were not encouraged because of fears over the physical damage women may suffer, and the harmful effects it had on the Victorian model of fragile and helpless femininity. 10 When the pace of industrialisation quickened, middle-class women found themselves increasingly homebound. Their social worth was measured through their womb, and not at the wicket. Before the First World War, almost all cricket clubs were formed of upper-class women. From the 1880s the White Heather Club was joined by other country-house teams including the Dragonflies (Derbyshire), Clifton Ladies (Bristol), Severn Valley and St Quentin’s Ladies (London). Their games were generally very private affairs with few spectators and no media present. It’s estimated only 23 teams existed in England in this decade. When games were played publicly they tended to be temporarily formed for novelty purposes, usually against a team of men batting left- handed or with broomsticks, to raise money for local charities. 11 However, while ladies’ cricket clubs started emerging it was educational institutions that were the driving force behind the sport before 1926. The very limited number of female-only higher education colleges that existed tended to form teams, such as Royal Holloway in Surrey which began playing before 1891, and potentially as early as its founding in 1886. Girton and Newnham Colleges, Cambridge both established women’s cricket teams in the 1890s. Not all universities were so accommodating,