Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

59 ‘Too much emphasis on personal comfort’ one of these women. In 1946, she described her blossoming, busy social life: ‘I have two step children and a small son… so you see I haven’t much time these days… I played hockey and cricket all through the war and I hope to get some cricket this summer.’ Social expectations would have certainly played a factor in this difference, but so too did age and life cycle. Medical opinion and the physical exertion needed in cricket, and most other sports, would have prevented most childbearing women from participating. Understandably, there was a significant drop in physical exercise during pregnancy and child rearing, despite the steady spread of gentle fitness classes for pregnant women. Women’s Cricket regularly reported successful players retiring from the game after or before marriage, and prior to child-rearing. Joan Davis, the only married women to play in all three test matches against Australia in 1937, was a notable exception, and would have toured Australia three years earlier if she had been single. 7 Within the WCA management, it was more likely married women would volunteer as part of central and county committees than play themselves. Marital status of individual members affiliated to the Women’s Cricket Association, 1933-1938 Year Marital Status Non-Playing Members Playing members Total Members 1933 Married 36% 8% 9% Unmarried 64% 92% 91% 1936 Married 50% 10% 11% Unmarried 50% 90% 89% 1938 Married 50% 11% 12% Unmarried 50% 89% 88% Source: WCA, Reports and Annual General Meetings (1933, 1936, 1938). Lists of individual members’ contact details was published only after 1933. Percentages are rounded to the nearest integer. If cricket for single women was tolerated by some as simply an expression of youthful exuberance, a woman continuing to play sport when married was considered an odious distraction from her domestic duties. ‘What use is a woman who is head of the averages’, wrote the Somerset amateur Malcolm ‘Dar’ Lyon in 1933, ‘if she neglects her wifely duties as heads of the household?... What good use is a woman golfer who can lay her approaches dead, if her long absences from the home cause the premature demise of all domestic affection?’ The 15 women selected for the 1934/5 tour of Australia had an average age of just 24, and all were unmarried. Like the WCA, the northern-based English Women’s Cricket Federation had very few married players, but married women did serve on the organisation’s committees. 8 Even well-known sportswomen such as Joyce Wethered, the four-time winner of the British Amateur Golf and the English Golf Championships, retired upon marriage. Although marriage seemed to have inhibited