Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

75 Workplace and Working-Class Women’s Cricket of the men’s game, split along class lines. Although no formal amateur- professional distinction existed, the Women’s Cricket Association’s (WCA) ban on prize money, tournaments and trophies was directly at odds with the English Women’s Cricket Federation, whose league competition and material rewards for outstanding performances were based on men’s league competitions in Lancashire and Yorkshire. As a result, the WCA has been viewed by some historians as a purely middle-class organisation that ‘failed to attract interest outside the products of a few elite private universities’. The English Federation, on the other hand, catered solely for poorer, working girls with little interest in decorum or sartorial standards. Women’s cricket has therefore been painted as a sport divided almost entirely by class and locality. 3 This misleading portrait was partly formed by the organisations themselves. ‘England is divided into two sections’, the president of the Yorkshire Women’s Cricket Federation, Frank Timperley, declared in 1932. ‘There is the Association in the South of England, which is more academical than industrial, and under its present regime can never appeal to the majority of the North of England girls, who come from offices, factories and various vocations.’ These sentiments were later echoed by the likes of Nancy Joy, a prominent member of the post-1945 WCA, who wrote that ‘thanks to the Federation, many a factory and business girl’ could play in the ‘industrial North’. Both organisations publicly clashed over issues of class, dress, female autonomy and league cricket. Pitting themselves against one another in national and local newspapers, they each claimed authority over the sport as they jostled for recognition and the loyalty of players. 4 The idea of a chasm separating women’s cricket, of a border stretching from Chester to Hull policing the uncouth, dynamic North from the delicate, genteel South was undeniably an exaggeration. But this fitted neatly with regional and class stereotypes, and was even more believable given the disproportionately devastating impact of the Great Depression on the northern economy. The English Federation certainly did contain many characteristically working-class company teams, such as textile mills and factories, but most clubs were associated with an existing men’s team and named for their location. Men’s clubs in Yorkshire and Lancashire tended to be socially inclusive cross-class centres of the local community. They represented a single village or town and therefore the diversity of its population. It is reasonable to assume Federation teams mirrored the broad spectrum of society. One member remembered her teammates as being ‘quite wealthy’ and ‘rather lah-di-dah’, while Brighouse Ladies’ Cricket Club was comprised from both elementary schools and the middle-class fee- paying senior school, Brighouse Girls’ Secondary School. This was only one of several girls’ secondary schools in West Yorkshire playing the game under the leadership of the English Federation. Individual clubs were also keenly supported by senior local figures, who were eager to publicise their inclusivity to expand playing numbers. While it is likely most girls playing