‘The Women in Whites: A History of Women’s Cricket in England’ by Raf Nicholson will change perceptions about the evolution of the game, putting pioneering players and innovators in the spotlight…
Good timing is essential in cricket, so this superb new history of women’s cricket by Raf Nicholson arrives at the perfect moment.
The Women’s World T20 is set to begin on June 12. Every match will be live on Sky Sports. More significantly still, a women’s Test match is to be played at Lord’s for the first time, beginning on July 10.
Nicholson is well known to readers of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack and as the founder of the adroitly named CRICKETher website. This fascinating work is the result of more than a decade’s research.
Cricket boasts the richest literature in sport. Even before Wisden first appeared in 1864, eighteenth-century scorer Samuel Britcher and later Arthur Haygarth and Frederick Lillywhite noted every run and wicket.
There is, however, relatively little collated material about the women’s game, even though their first recorded match took place in 1745. “11 maids” of Hambledon defeated Bramley on a village green just outside Guildford. “The girls batted, bowled, ran and catched (sic) as well as most men,” it was said.
In The Guardian, Nicholson recalled her visit to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) library over a decade ago whilst researching her doctorate. “When the MCC’s Neil Robinson took me to the section of the shelves on women’s cricket, I found that it consisted of three books,” she lamented.
There had been a slim volume entitled “Maiden Over,” an account of the 1948-9 tour of Australia and New Zealand by England player Nancy Joy, which also contained a brief history.
In 1976, there came “Fair Play,” by legendary former England captain Rachael Heyhoe Flint and Netta Rheinberg, an autobiography of Heyhoe Flint and later Isabelle Duncan’s “Skirting the Boundary.”
To which may be added Nicholson’s first book, entitled “Ladies and Lord’s: A History of Women’s Cricket in Britain”. By her own admission, this was “targeted at an academic audience and with a hefty price tag, unlikely to reach a wide audience.”
Her latest offering is more competitively priced and offers much valuable and hitherto not widely known information.
“What is life but a game of cricket, and if so why should not the ladies play it as well as we?” pondered the Duke of Dorset in the 18th century.
The intense research shines through every page. A scorebook belonging to “White Heather”, a cricket club founded for women in the late 19th century, proved a valuable source.
On a farm in Lancashire, Nicholson discovered the archives of the Women’s Cricket Association established exactly 100 years ago. Happily, these are now well cared for at Lord’s.
The book brings to life early personalities, including the first WCA Chairman (sic) Frances Heron Maxwell, a redoubtable sportswoman known to all as “Max” who had also been President of the All-England Women’s Hockey Association.
The constant refusal of MCC to allow the women a match at Lord’s is highlighted. “Regret no dates” was the usual excuse, and Nicholson reports a lyrical WCA response to the first refusal in 1929.
Heyhoe Flint, perhaps the best-known women’s cricketer of all time, looms large. She is mentioned almost a hundred times.
The first Women’s World Cup was organised in 1973 thanks largely to her persuading cricket-loving tycoon Sir Jack Hayward to sponsor it.
Infamously, the decisive match was played at Edgbaston because MCC refused permission to play it at Lord’s. Nicholson recalls that in the Daily Mail, Ian Wooldridge described it as “a wretched discourtesy” and branded Lord’s “stately home of the Misogynists’ Cricket Club.”
Heyhoe Flint and many others finally had their wish in 1976. England did meet and beat Australia in a one-day international at Lord’s. How this was agreed is set down in detail.
Nicholson concludes: “Heyhoe Flint had proven to be both an enormous asset and a difficult personality to manage. Her slightly risqué sense of humour posed a real threat to the decorum-centric, conservative image of women’s cricket.”
The book also relates the decision to sack her from the England team, which made national headlines.
The author had not yet been born when England played at Lord’s in 1976, but she was present in 2017 when England beat India in a thrilling World Cup final before a sell-out crowd including many female spectators.
By this time, domestic women’s cricket was under the wing of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), and the International Cricket Council assumed control of the global women’s game.
Nicholson asserts that The Hundred, a controversial franchise tournament introduced by the ECB, “continued to bring a visibility and scale to the women’s game that it had previously only dreamed of.” She does concede it has been “a divisive route towards equality.”
“There has been a powerful assumption for too long that ‘cricket’ equals ‘men’s cricket’, and that it is possible to write a history of cricket without women being present. It’s a history that was for years hidden in boxes and in memories, belonging to women whose names nobody knew. If this book can bring even a little bit of that history to light, it will have fulfilled its purpose,” Nicholson writes.
By that assessment alone, “The Women in Whites” has surely cleared the boundary by some distance.
‘The Women in Whites’ by Raf Nicholson is published by Pitch Publishing, price £19.99.
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