Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

55 It’s not Cricket? Public Hostility and Apathy Rather than continue an ‘endless war’ with men, players should simply leave the field and return to their ‘natural sphere’ where their bodies (and society) were not in danger. 25 At a time when racial health and national prestige was suspected to be in decline, as well as a falling birth rate and the threat of another European war, the management of women’s bodies became a pressing political problem. Her selfishness threatened not only her own health, but that of the nation and empire. She was unfeminine, uncivilised and uncouth. Women’s cricket was intimately tied to debates within medical science, and the use of these to justify the domestic ideal was a powerful and persuasive argument. For other commentators, the issue of sport was less about whether women could play but more whether they should play. What were the benefits: social, individual or otherwise? This was the concern of Somerset’s amateur wicketkeeper Malcolm ‘Dar’ Lyon (1898-1964), who did not doubt women could play the game well, and even thought it possible they could compete with men. However, he warned against any form of mixed competition, fearful that female cricketers would ‘dazzle’ players with their beauty or find excuses when given out, and cause havoc when they stopped to apply ‘lipstick or powder their nose while at the wicket.’ Instead, Lyon argued if women were to play they should do so simply for fun, bowling underarm and focusing on skilful spin bowling rather than pace, and hitting ‘gentler’ strokes ‘rather than the full-blooded drive’. Certainly, there were some lines women could not cross. Regardless of feelings of ‘grandeur’, he thought women should only play uncompetitively, and never in mixed- sex matches. ‘I hope they will not begin to take the game too seriously’, he wrote. ‘Let the married players at least try not to disturb their own domestic bliss. We don’t want to hear mother saying: “You bath the children tonight, George. I must have a net. My footwork seems to have gone to blazes.”’ 26 Lyon simply parroted the view of many in the cricketing establishment. Surely some women could play the game well, but they should only play when it failed to challenge men, both in the home and on the field. The belief women’s lives were defined by their ordained roles as wife and mother doggedly clung to the sport even after they had proven so adept at it. In the face of widespread apathy, scepticism and hostility, advocates of women’s sports had to prove not only proficiency but utility. Men rarely faced any need to prove the worth of their sports. The moral qualities of cricket, both individual and communal, were long established and accepted facets of the English gentlemanly manhood. Their application to the ‘opposite sex’ would take some convincing, but the challenge was met with resolve and thick skin. The organising bodies needed a judicious response if they were to survive in a man’s world, but were not willing for their cricket to meekly subside into whimsical frolicking in the park.