n’s cricket, she will follow Grace in having gates named after her at Lord’s.
In the late 1990s under government pressure, the WCA dissolved itself and women’s cricket was subsumed into the England and Wales Cricket Board. As with similar mergers in other countries including Pakistan this change had big consequences. English women’s cricket gained huge new resources, which finally allowed England’s top women cricketers to become the first in the world to get paid as full-time professionals. But there are still regrets among women cricket players and supporters that English women’s cricket is no longer run by women who knew it and loved it and that they have been replaced almost entirely by white middle-aged male strangers.
Around the same time, women finally broke into the bastion of the MCC, at the direction of an enlightened President, Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, the former Hampshire captain. Long waiting lists (the current time is 29 years!) have ensured that it is still dominated by male members.
Lord’s did not stage a women’s match until 1976 and the present fixture list is virtually a male preserve. This may change under Claire Connor, former England women’s captain, as the first female President.
T20 has given English women’s cricket a huge stimulus, especially the proliferation of overseas T20 competitions, which has given the best women players new earning opportunities. The advent of “double headers” – top grade men’s and women’s T20 matches played on the same day – forced the media to show and report women’s cricket seriously.
Coverage, spectatorship and above all participation in English women’s cricket have risen exponentially in just the last five years. Improved playing standards, international success, above all the World Cup victory in 2017 followed by millions on television, have made the game commercially attractive. The top players such as Sarah Taylor, widely recognized among the best wicketkeepers in the world, female or male, have gained name recognition and good incomes from playing and product endorsements (although still unequal to men’s).
But there are clouds over England women’s cricket as over men’s and indeed over cricket worldwide.
Linked barriers of class and race continue to make the game far more accessible to white privately educated girls than to minority ethnic girls and those from low-income families in state schools. Moreover, there is a rural-urban divide: the clubs with thriving women’s and girls’ teams tend to be concentrated in the countryside and suburbs rather than inner cities.
There are major worries too about the survival of long-form cricket for English women. It was in trouble before the pandemic and since then financial imperatives have generated even greater focus on T20, the form which makes far and away the most money. The career of Heather Knight, the present England women’s captain, gives a vivid illustration of the trend. She recently completed 200 international appearances – but just eight of them were women’s Test matches.
Richard Heller’s latest book The Prisoner Of Rubato Towers is an increasingly crazed account of lockdown life in London without cricket.