Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

79 Workplace and Working-Class Women’s Cricket Unfortunately, the game was still out of reach for many. Women’s Cricket and other media was used as a method of building a community of cricketers, and Pollard corresponded with organisations like the National Council of Girls’ Clubs and The Federation of Working Girls’ Clubs to connect interested members with their local women’s team, and organised donations of playing equipment to the latter body. The wilful attempt to involve working-class girls was not confined to clubs and schools, but workplaces too. Although the governance of the Association remained in the hands of educated bourgeois women, working-class players were a significant and growing portion of the WCA in the interwar period. 14 Nor was the game strictly divided by a working-class professional North, and an amateur, wealthy South. This is a well-trodden narrative in several sports, notably Rugby Union and Rugby League, and historians of cricket have often fused class and geography when discussing the development of the men’s game. But this simplified landscape usually falls short of the reality – professional and amateur (and league and ‘friendly’) men’s cricket existed in both the North and South of England, and clubs at all levels were generally cross-class. 15 Competitive women’s league cricket does not appear to have thrived outside of northern counties, but exceptions do exist in the Forest of Dean and South Northamptonshire Leagues. 16 While the English Federation may have been confined to Lancashire and Yorkshire, the WCA had representation throughout Britain. The Association’s strength was undeniably in the South East of England, at roughly half their affiliated bodies during the interwar period, but the proportion of northern clubs nearly-doubled in 11 years to a fifth of the Association. Once again many of these joined as leagues and had more members than the average club in the South East. Distribution of bodies affiliated to the WCA, 1927-1938 1927 1930 1933 1936 1938 South East 50% 48% 51% 63% 55% South West 22% 19% 11% 7% 10% Midlands and East Anglia 13% 14% 17% 12% 12% North 11% 17% 18% 14% 20% Other 4% 2% 3% 4% 3% Source: WCA, Reports and Annual General Meetings (1927-1938). Percentages are rounded to the nearest integer. No data exists for 1939. Albeit some regions of Britain, such as East Anglia, Wales and Scotland did not have good representation, but these areas were not bastions of men’s cricket either, unlike the South East and North. The Association did not spread osmotically. Teams clustered around urban areas where a community of cricketers, and fixtures, could be found: in London, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds. Some cities were beyond the reach of either organisation, such as Reading and Leicester, but both the Association and English Federation were more diverse than surface impressions suggest. A regional divide existed only to the extent the