When my friend Becca told me that she wanted to start a women’s cricket team at the local village cricket club – Mayfield Cricket Club in East Sussex – I was encouraging but slightly wary. As a 48-year-old woman with a full-time job which took me away from my family one night a week, I struggled to see how I would fit it in, negotiate with my husband for the time away plus overcome the embarrassment of potentially being completely rubbish at a sport in front of loads of people that I don’t know.
As it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Becca arranged with the club for indoor nets practice to start in February this year and between us we encouraged, or emotionally blackmailed, a budding group of about six or so women, many recruited from the school gate, to come along to try it out. By and large, we are a collection of women in their late 30s to mid-50s who were not taught cricket at school. Most of us are reasonably sporty and will have played and enjoyed tennis, golf, hockey or rounders in the past, and still play something now, but we also have some players who have not picked up any kind of bat since school days. We are also lucky enough to have a couple of players who are either young enough to have played through school or have played at a very high standard internationally (I appreciate this is unusual!). They give us a great blueprint for what good looks like, as well as a clear demonstration of why we need proper padding and protection!
Coach Carl (the Club Chair) and seasoned player Mei provided the knowhow and taught us the basics of batting, bowling and catching. I wasn’t a total novice – having played cricket briefly in a very amateur fashion at university – but it was a long time ago. Fortunately the muscle memory kicked in to a certain extent, helped by some hand-eye coordination from being a regular tennis player. I quickly realised there’s nothing like throwing a hard ball as hard as you can at someone standing a few metres away to relieve stress. That was promptly matched by the cathartic feeling of thumping a ball really hard with a wooden bat.
At the nets, it also quickly became apparent that we did these things differently to the men – who were more or less silently bowling and batting in the neighbouring nets, punctuated by the thump of the ball and the occasional expletive. In our lane there were cries of encouragement, laughter, jokes and even whooping, which echoed around the barn. Every so often one of our male teammates would stick their heads around the net to help us with our technique. Whatever the ball did, we gave and received enthusiastic support, safe in the knowledge that we were all learning.
I was hooked.
Over the weeks, we progressed to playing outside and the team grew and grew as word spread. Now an enthusiastic crew of about 20 women, we’ve had to be flexible with potential players because most of us are mothers and so we have to work around childcare arrangements. We could never expect everyone to turn up to every practice. Inevitably there are always a number of small children knocking about while we practice and there are worse places for children to hang out than a cricket club.
The time commitment I was worried about has been outweighed by the obvious joy I get from the training and the playing. It is my time for me and I really miss it when I can’t go to a session. It is just so much fun, making new friends in such a supportive environment, and learning a new skill. I know all my teammates feel the same way.
We had our first friendly match last week against Linden Park Women’s team and the outpouring of happiness on the group chat afterwards was overwhelming – and not just because we won! Before the game we confessed to our opponents that we were all super nervous, and they felt the same. I’m not sure you’d get that from a men’s team.
Feedback from the existing members tells us that the arrival of the women’s team has been a shot in the arm for the club: there are more people coming along to events, the Friday night Tots and Colts sessions have more sign-ups and there is a different vibe. The bar has had to stock up on extra rosé and white wine. Of course, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, we’re a fun bunch to have around.
It's early days, and we have our first proper cricket match coming up so no doubt there’ll be a lot more learnings to come! Wish us luck!