Lord's

Great result in the Test match today. I am exceptionally impressed with England as a team, and an excellent result for test cricket generally, too.

I was at Lords on Day 1, Thursday, with my Dad, sporting my England women's shirt and an umbrella, and eating my sausage and egg roll with relish. I love Lord's, just being there, even if it chucks it down with rain, as it did from about 4pm. It's the atmosphere; probably something to do with the historian lurking within me feeding off the many years of history contained at this very special ground.

Perhaps because I am now starting to analyse things more often with my 'feminist sports historian' hat, however, something did strike me rather forcefully. This was that, at a rough ratio, men outnumbered women by something like 10 to 1 in the crowd. In my section of the crowd, I appeared to be the only female present aged under thirty-five.

I wonder if this is a typical ratio at cricket matches in England. Or is it something to do with Lord's, a ground which did not allow women to play there until 1976; home of the MCC, a club that only voted to admit female members in 1998? (A ground I also love, and can't understand why anyone else would NOT love, but hey, it's worth asking the question...)

I'd be very interested in statistical data on this, if it's available; I'm sure it would bring out some of the points in my wider research about cricketing spaces being defined as masculine spaces. It strikes me that this is probably the case for many other sports as well - in particular I can't see it NOT being true for football, I'll be honest.

It does seem that if we're trying to make some kind of progress for sportswomen, for female cricketers, for women in society generally, this is a really central issue. Sports grounds shouldn't remain as some kind of pocket of masculinity, but we should be seeking to actively redefine them as gender-neutral spaces and encouraging women to attend cricket (etc) matches. ESPECIALLY when what's being played is the kind of cricket we saw today, yesterday and the day before which couldn't possibly fail to hold anyone's attention, male, female or any other category you care to mention.

This is an intriguing news story that I saw on BBC news a few days ago:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13746703

The majority of the Sri Lanka women's cricket squad have signed up for jobs in the armed services.
The move comes after attempts by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) to find a sponsor for the women's team have failed so far to create much interest.

The attempts made by the English women's governing body until 1998, the Women's Cricket Association, to attract commercial sponsorship, could probably fill a book in themselves, but I have yet to research this aspect of the sport's history in detail. This can wait for another blog post, perhaps. Suffice it to say that women's sport has always been and is still chronically underfunded and undersponsored (although the situation has improved in Britain in recent years).

The other aspect of this news story that I find interesting is the way a career in the army is portrayed as highly compatible with playing cricket: the players, according to the BBC correspondent, "can hone their sporting skills while in uniform."

I spent part of last year researching the history of women's sport in the British army for my Master's dissertation. Specifically I looked at the Second World War, and the impact this had on opportunities for women to participate in sport (and cricket specifically).

The question posed was what effect total war might have had on the 'masculine' domain of sport. Relating to the above news story, I particularly considered the entrance of 445,000 women into the auxiliary armed forces between 1939 and 1945. In this period, the authorities recognised the value of sport for morale purposes and established a welfare organisation, with welfare officers securing equipment and grounds to enable women to play sports and games, as well as organising compulsory Physical Training (PT) for recruits. The attitude that a career in the army is compatible with the playing of sport evidenly has a long history.

One striking trend was the frequency with which mixed sport - previously frowned upon in British society - took place where men and women were stationed together. For example, Women's Cricket reported after the war that some of the WCA's talented players were selected to play in the predominantly male Officers v Sergeants cricket matches.

Conservative attitudes towards female athleticism remained in place. The Treasury would not budget for additional PT kit for women, refusing to believe that they would be participating in strenuous enough activities to require this. Additionally, PT was specially adapted to women and mainly involved 'light' gymnastic movements. It was specified that women should not be able to compete in violent sports such as tug-of-war.

Nonetheless, a time of total war coupled with the entrance of women into the armed forces did expand the sporting opportunities available to a number of females, and for a time at least broke down some gender boundaries.

To bring this back to the news story I started this blog entry by quoting from, it does seem as though we might greet the news of female cricketers joining the Sri Lankan Army as a positive development, breaking down the traditional association between masculinity, sport and war. On the other hand it seems clear to me that both these arenas are still perceived as 'masculine' and that female involvement, even in a time of total war as described above, is unable to permanently break down these associations to any great extent.

The amateur/professional divide

One of the major divides in the history of men's cricket has been that of the amateur vs the professional, otherwise known as the gentlemen vs the players. Theoretically at least, professionals were paid for their cricket and amateurs were not. The divide, however, went far deeper than this. It was enhanced by the English class structure, in which the amateur was traditionally a member of the elite and did not need payment. Professionals relied on their wages to live. Almost right up until the divide was abolished in 1962, genetleman and players used separate dressing rooms and professionals were required to address amateurs as "sir".

Women's cricket has followed a different history. In common with other women's sports, it has always been and remains a largely amateur sport. Very few women have been able to consider playing cricket a career choice. Sadly, this reflects the complete disparity between men's and women's sports, and resulted in an often dire financial situation for the Women's Cricket Association (WCA), who despite England's triumph in the 1993 World Cup were unable to capitalise on this success as they faced near-bankruptcy after hosting the tournament, and were thereafter forced into a merger with the ECB from a position of weakness.

But, interestingly, there are suggestions that women continue to be proud of their amateur status. Karen Smithies, former England captain, put it like this:

women cricketers tend to be more vibrant, more enthusiastic, more committed, because they've given such a lot to play. You've got to want it desperately to be there. I've always said, between me and my parents, cricket's probably cost us fifteen or twenty thousand pounds in lost wages, travelling, kit – but I'd give it all again.

Even more interestingly from my perspective are the historical continuities between this account, and several quotes from Marjorie Pollard, one of the WCA's founders, who declared proudly in 1930 that women played the game "because we enjoy it", and not because of cash incentives.

The problem for women's cricket is that this attitude has often been accompanied by an elitist ethos similar to the one the MCC so successfully cultivated up until 1962, and that consequently women's cricket has remained inaccessible to the working-class woman. The continued lack of funding available for female seeking to play cricket suggests this may be another historical continuity, though one can speculate that the sport has become more readily available to the less privileged in recent years, in part due to the 1998 merger of the WCA with the ECB.

More recently, there have been signs of a conflict amongst those who wish to see women's cricket remain an amateur sport, played for enjoyment's sake only, and those who stress the urgency of enforcing higher standards of professionalism if women's cricket is to be taken seriously by the media. Davies highlighted this in his 1998 book Mad Dogs and English Women in which he reported comments made by England's then assistant coach Peter Moralee:

You'll go and see people playing these friendly games, they're putting on bowlers that are absolutely crap, they're letting the tail bat first – and how is that good for women's cricket? How is that serious? But if you say anything about it, they get all huffy.

There seems to be a clash of priorities at the heart of this: is the priority to make the game accessible and friendly for women of any age, or to ensure greater exposure in the international media spotlight? It is a difficult question to answer, and how you answer probably depends on the level of cricket that you play.

Looking to the future, the obvious question is: will there ever be fully professional female cricketers? There have been positive steps in this direction, the main one being the establishment of central contracts for 10 players by the ECB in 2008, though players are still required to spend 50% of their time coaching, and are therefore in my opinion only semi-professional. Meanwhile, the majority of women continue to play, often at far greater personal cost than their male counterparts, yet with far smaller rewards ultimately awaiting them.

"The power game"

I just finished reading an interview with the first woman to score a century in Twenty20, Deandra Dottin,

(here: http://www.cricinfo.com/wwt202010/content/story/459041.html)

during which the interviewer stated that "the power game is something that is not often associated with women's cricket."

I suspect that most people, if they did bother to read this interview, would accept this statement without a second thought. But it made me stop and think. In the research I have conducted to date, on both women's sport and women in cricket specifically, the issue of female physical strength - in this case phrased covertly as "the power game" - is one that crops up again and again. Mainly the idea that women are less physically able than men, however it is phrased, is bandied about as a justification for the marginalisation of female sport.

How often have journalists written reports of women's games that express this kind of sentiment, stating that "it just wasn't as fast-paced as the men's game" or "it wasn't as exciting"?

How long must female athletes continue to have to compete against men? Dottin scored the quickest century to date in both women's and men's cricket. Doesn't this prove something?

Aren't these kind of sentiments just another kind of phallocentrism in a society that claims to strive for gender equality? Why should it be any more acceptable that any other form of sexism?

Marjorie Pollard, writing on women's cricket in 1930, wrote:
"we do not wish to follow, we wish to go our own way...play our own cricket in our own way."

Today's sportswomen would do well to follow this sentiment.