Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

53 It’s not Cricket? Public Hostility and Apathy cricket-itis tended to have an unnatural preoccupation with sex too; being quick to temper, they both hated and imitated men. 19 The depiction of female cricketers may have been sensationalised, but it was an argument which played to the tune of popular fears over the decline of 19th-century understandings of fragile femininity. Demanding team sports were pitted against women’s psychology and biology, twisting their morals and bodies into unnatural, socially irresponsible beings. The female body mirrored wider debates over women’s cultural, social and economic position. Despite showcasing their aptitude and strength in wartime, women began to lose their jobs enmasse fromas early as 1917, and returned to domestic confinement. Newspapers labelled those that stayed in employment as unpatriotic homewreckers. Public displays of physical and mental strength threatened to undermine the core assumptions that kept women in the home: that they were fragile, emotionally unsteady, and delicate creatures in need of shelter. In a characteristic sexualisation of female athletes, one local journalist expressed his disappointment that ‘jolly nice-looking’ girls spent their evenings ‘probably getting their feet wet’ on the field than competing in beauty competitions. Medical opinion remained sceptical of the benefits of team sports for girls’ development, and although it was generally more positive by the late 1930s, pseudo- medical opposition continued unabated. 20 It was common for adversaries of women’s cricket to allege it damaged women’s reproductive health, an argument which had commonly been laid against women’s higher education from the 1870s. When in 1881 the Birmingham Teachers’ Association proposed allowing girls to play cricket, the Birmingham Daily Mail unleashed a tirade at the mere suggestion. ‘If cricket is to become a recognised game in ladies’ schools, we can expect football to be introduced, and then single-stick, and no doubt the dear damsels will finish up with boxing’, it argued. Cricket was a ‘violent athletic pursuit’ that would create ‘horney-handed, wide-shouldered and deep voiced’ girls, ‘with biceps like a blacksmith’. 21 Ms Cowdroy repeated these stark warnings when she claimed cricketers had ‘often childless’ marriages and ‘the monthly disabilities that should prove them women stop for long periods.’ The Board of Education even launched an investigation into the effects of sport on menstruation and childbirth in the spring of 1939. Leading male physicians cautioned parents that competitive sports could turn good, dutiful wives into ‘homosexual creatures.’ 22 The sport may have been a source of social integration and harmony for men, but for women it seemed to threaten the very fabric of life itself. Even physicians and feminists, like Mary Scharlieb (1845-1930), warned against excessive physical exercise. She praised cricket, hockey and netball in 1911 for endowing girls with morals they would need in later life, and called for the promotion of team sports in schools. However, she also cautioned those that had an ‘excessive and unwise devotion to athletics.’ These young women would be ‘fatally damaged by the excitement and nervous exhaustion caused by the strain’ of too much sport, and they threatened to damage the health of ‘the race.’ She claimed strenuous exercise could even