’s Cricket, and became the first woman anywhere in the world to become a radio commentator on cricket.
The Second World War brought millions of English women out of home into the services and factories – but it did not make much difference to women’s cricket afterwards. Another major expansion of state education continued to exclude cricket for girls, so just as before most women players, especially on England international duty, were privately educated with the time and the means to play as amateurs. This was reinforced by public policy in the 1970s and 1980s.
Although successive governments decided to promote sporting activity for women they all assumed that women were not interested in team games and instead promoted activities like swimming, keep-fit classes and dancing. Moreover, when laws were introduced to provide equal pay for women and outlaw sex discrimination these excluded cricket. To this day it is lawful in England to pay a female cricketer less than a male one of similar skill.
However, two post-war great players broke the mould of genteel women amateurs grateful to play cricket on terms set by men.
The all-rounder Enid Bakewell had a better Test match batting average than Javed Miandad (although from only 12 Tests, which were much rarer than men’s in her time and have become much rarer now.) A miner’s daughter, Enid was fortunate and unusual in being introduced to cricket at her state school. She was even more unusual in identifying as a socialist and a feminist.
Rachael Heyhoe, later Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, was the first England women’s cricketer to become a household name. As a campaigner for women’s cricket and, especially, payments for women cricketers, and one who embraced the media and commercial sponsorship, she was a dramatic, modernizing, one-woman force.
She never feared to confront the Establishment in both men’s and women’s cricket. Later in life she joined the Establishment herself as the first female cricketer to become a member of the House of Lords. Often called the W G Grace of wome