Lives in Cricket No 49 - Enid Bakewell

25 Chapter Four Dartford Schooldays over, Enid went on to Dartford. Today she would have gone on to university, but only a few took that route in the 1950s. Dartford at the time was a PE college; it is now a part of the University of Greenwich. Enid was eventually awarded a degree at a ceremony in 2017. Her PE teacher at Brincliffe, Ann Borton, had been to Dartford and took Enid to London to help buy her uniform. She was to discover that this move had brought her closer to the centre of women’s cricket, and that who you knew was important. “If you were part of the counties round London you had a chance to play for England. ‘Then I went to PE college at Dartford because there were two people there who played for England (and Mary Duggan was vice-principal) and I knew I could play cricket. What I didn’t know was that you needed to get your name known among the London counties (like the men used to be). Molly Hide was treated like royalty down there - she had a farm and if you were invited there it was like going to Buckingham Palace. She was a great character and I had a little photograph of her in my ‘Girl’ diary playing a cover drive. I never saw her play but they used to have Molly Hide’s team against someone else’s and I got to play in these games and that helped me along.’ The two England players already there were Rachael Heyhoe and Mary Pilling. Enid knew Rachael because they had played together for Midlands teams and against each other at club and county level. Rachael Heyhoe says of Dartford being an all-female establishment, our college was obviously much in demand for social functions at the nearby military training schools, and we became a sort of amateur escort agency when the passing-out balls came around . 8 Life at Dartford was not a picnic. Students lived in single rooms in three large houses in the college grounds. The facilities of a PE college were all there – swimming pool, tennis courts, netball pitches, hockey, lacrosse and cricket. The catering was another story. Meals were provided for all students except those out on their final teaching practice. The college employed outside caterers and the first apparently over-spent. This was a specialist PE college but it would seem that little or no attention was paid to diet in those days, and what they were fed was mainly stodge, lots of potatoes. There was a small nearby shop run by a Mrs Pook where they would go to supplement the college food – but this was mainly biscuits so they were not really eating properly. Enid was ill while she was there, possibly depressed but also with wounds on her ankles that turned septic, 8 Heyhoe, p.62