Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

66 ‘Too much emphasis on personal comfort’ winning the English Ladies Cup competition against Doncaster in front of over 2,000 spectators. Dick, Kerr’s were forced to play overseas, in Spain and the United States, despite popular support at home. Medical opinion was used to support their decision that it damaged women ‘internally’. Without male support attempts to form an organising body quickly failed. The ban effectively prevented a promising spectator sport from developing into one of mass participation, and playing numbers did not develop significantly until after it was officially lifted in 1971. 22 Where football and cricket probably had a similar number of teams nationally in the early 1920s, women’s football declined into relative obscurity, just as cricket began to surface. The highly public reprimand was a result of women flouting the expectations of their gender: football’s antagonistic, vigorous play was at odds with the still-dominant expectation of fragile femininity, and footballers were punished for blatantly failing this ideal. While it was unlikely the MCC would ever have acted so heavy- handedly as the Football Association, especially for an organisation so laissez-faire in their management of grassroots cricket, the environment cricketers ventured into was undoubtedly hostile and raw. Marjorie Pollard wrote that cricket was equally ‘threatened with extinction’ when they first set out in the mid-1920s. Some opponents of the sport organised a boycott of all men’s clubs which allowed women to use their facilities, but the movement never got off the ground. The WCA, recognising safeguards were needed to protect the game’s respectable ‘feminine’ image from the outset, were eager to learn the lessons of women’s football. 23 One important method of ‘feminising’ cricket was to limit the combativeness of play. In an effort to guarantee ‘there will never be competitive cricket’, the WCA adopted the Club Cricket Conference’s rules on amateurism which not only forbade players from being paid, but also banned any leagues or tournaments. These rules were strengthened in 1938 after local newspapers started offering bats and monetary prizes to players following the 1937 Ashes series, and members were now prohibited from using their names or photographs for advertising purposes. Meanwhile, clubs caught participating in leagues were threatened with expulsion. In doing so, the WCA distanced themselves from the ‘shamateurism’ of women’s football players, some of whom received such generous ‘expenses’ they bought homes with them. When clubs affiliated to the WCA were found to be playing in cup competitions, they were told to leave either the Association or the league at the end of the season. County sides were prohibited from the using term ‘County Cricket’ in preference for the more docile ‘County Association’, as it was considered to hold less expectation on having ‘really high standards of play.’ Players were incentivised to improve by the lure of county and district games at first-class grounds, but the WCA would not allow financial motivations to jeopardise the sport. 24 Exaggerated amateurism was a common aspect of women’s sport from the 1890s onwards. The All-England Women’s Hockey Association embraced a similar set of rules which guided the WCA’s, and games developed