Lives in Cricket No 49 - Enid Bakewell

41 Australia and New Zealand 1968-69 for instance carrying brief reports of the matches, though clearly taking an agency report rather than sending anyone. Clearly, none of the press thought it worth sending anyone, so the only first-hand account, however sketchy, was Rachael Heyhoe in the Telegraph. Enid had been brought up in a Methodist family, so didn’t drink, but on this tour discovered port and lemon. Mary Brito bribed me –‘every time you get five wickets I’ll give you a port and lemon’. Dad was a Methodist so I had no experience of drink. When you get port and lemon here it’s mostly lemonade but it’s wine growing country round Adelaide so it was the other way round. But I managed to realise when it was getting a wee bit over the top. Mary Brito, born in Portugal, brought up by her grandmother in Barnsley, was then living in wine growing country near Adelaide. Later she moved to New Zealand and later still came over for a World Cup and stayed with Enid in her bedsit which was “barely big enough for one”. Once they had woken up properly and had seven days to get over jet lag (the first known use of the term ‘jet lag’ dates from 1969, so they wouldn’t have called it that) and also apparently sunburn from the Western Australian beaches, the tour started against Western Australia in Perth on December 13, though not at the WACA, but at Rosalie Park: the park is still there but if you look on Google Earth, now entirely laid out to soccer pitches. The first thing to make headlines was a century by Audrey Disbury as England, having started uncertainly, scored 228 for five declared. Jill Cruwys, not to play in any of the Australian Tests, made 71 not out but broke a finger. Enid, not expected to be the star of the team and thought of mainly as a Back: Shirley Hodges (Sussex), Carol Evans (Glamorgan), June Moorhouse (Yorkshire), Lynne Thomas (Glamorgan), Val Hesmondhaigh (Middlesex, manager), Jill Cruwys (Kent), Anne Sanders (Middlesex), Leslie Clifford (Yorkshire), Heather Dewdney (Kent), Sheila Plant (surrey). Front: Christine Watmough, Jean Clark (Kent), Edna Barker (Surrey, vice-captain), Rachael Heyhoe (Staffordshire, captain), Audrey Disbury, Mary Pilling (Kent), Enid.