t-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 women’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 