Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

31 Out of the Darkness: The Game Emerges War these activities had quickly diversified. Tennis was typically seen as the most suitable of these sports, with non-competitive doubles matches frequently played as part of mixed-gender socialising and courting. It was also common for wealthier women to play golf as part ladies’ sections at men’s clubs, but competitive play was judged to be improper and participation was nearly always limited to social engagements. Both sports offered women an opportunity for flirtatious encounters with the opposite sex, but in an acceptable environment. This was an important factor in the nation’s other favourite physical pastimes, bathing and dancing. Alternatively swimming, while initially controversial due to open exposure of the female body, was by 1918 actively encouraged by authorities. The Board of Education praised its ability to ensure girls’ bodies ‘developed symmetrically… a safe and pleasant approach which will in time reduce bulk and restore muscular tissue’. By 1939 swimming was a very popular, inexpensive and, due to the growth in municipal provision, available pastime. 33 Physically demanding sports that were considered less graceful or elegant, such as athletics and rowing, met sterner disapproval. The Amateur Athletics Association openly opposed female events at the Olympics, and although they were overruled by the International Olympic Committee in 1930, women were restricted to ‘aesthetical events’ like swimming, skating and gymnastics. The slow progress made by the International Olympic Committee frustrated reformers so much they organised a rival event, the Women’s Olympic Games. Athletes from dozens of countries competed in events banned by the established Games. Four competitions were organised between 1922 and 1934, with another in 1938 abandoned due to Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. Olympic governance opposed female participation in more vigorous track and field events on ideological grounds, despite a breadth of medical opinion to the contrary. 34 Female athletes and sports enthusiasts realised from the outset that real change would only come independently of existing sporting organisations, as these were often the bodies that opposed their participation the strongest. Autonomous, separate female sporting organisations, such as the All-England Women’s Hockey Association and the WCA, were to prove the most common (and effective) method of promoting women’s sporting activity. Nonetheless, women’s presence on cricket fields still proved contentious, and in some instances authorities, male players and spectators were openly hostile. In this context, the rapid growth of the game had less to do with structural changes in the socio-economic landscape of England, than the unrelenting energy of those championing it. 1 Women’s Cricket Association (WCA), Report 1939-1945, 6-7; Women’s Cricket (May 1946), 13-14; The Cricketer (June 1946), 107. 2 Selina Todd, The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class (London, 2015), 99-115. 3 WCA, Report 1938, 15; Women’s Cricket (July 1939), 44. Verity died in Italy following war wounds sustained during the invasion of Sicily in 1943. 4 In 1992 the WCA had just 50 clubs and 35 schools affiliated. 5 Letter from Leila Hemstreet to Netta Rheinberg (WCA archive, 4 January 1967).