Waspish-Waisted Women in Billowing Skirts of the Eighteenth Century Were Pioneers of Present-Day Girl's Cricket Matches

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 624, 28 March 1929, Page 7

Waspish-Waisted Women in Billowing Skirts of the Eighteenth Century Were Pioneers of Present-Day Girl's Cricket Matches

ON Saturday next at Eden Park two teams from the recently formed Auckland Girls’ Cricket Association will demonstrate their prowess in the king of games. This is the culmination of the rapid growth during the past year of cricket among the fairer sex of Auckland. . The increasing popularity of the game as a recreation for women during the years following the war has lead many to suppose that the movement is an entirely modern one. As Alfred Bedford pointed out in “The Cricketer” some time ago this is bv no means the case.

So long ago as 1745 the women of Bramley met the women of Hambledon in a game on Gosden Common, near Guildford. Thirty years later six single women beat six married ones by 17 runs in a match on Moulsey Hurst, and history records that "many London gentlemen players were present and there were great bets depending.” There is extant a delightful print, dated 1779, which depicts "the Countess of Derby and some other Ladies of Quality and Fashion’’ playing cricket at Sevenoaks. In 1792 eleven girls of Rotherby, in Leicestershire, beat a similar team of Hoby maidens. So great was the joy in the former village, which contained about 10 houses against its rival’s 50 odd. that the bowler-esses of the successful side were put in a kind of tri-

f umphal car and, to the accompaniment - of music and flying streamers, were i, pulled home by the youths of Rotherby. *

K Two years before Queen Victoria S’ came to the throne 11 married women, dresesd in light blue and wearing ribbons round their waists 1 and heads, played a team of I maidens, who were attired in white with pink sashes and cap bows, at Parson’s Green, for £lO and a hot supper at the “White Horse.” s Some two or three years ago = the cricket world was surprised by a challenge issued to Jack Hobbs i by Miss Muriel Maxted to let her f bowl to him.

y i Miss Maxted, or Mrs. King Turner, j I as she has since become, is probably j 9 j the finest woman cricketer ever seen.: - In 1923 she took 79 wickets for a little j* - lover four runs each for Beaver Wed- i:

nesday (Men’s) C.C. She has also played for' Ashford (Kent) Authentics and the Ramblers, and is probably the only woman who has captained a team of men—this being the Ashford XI. Another fine all-round lady cricketer is Miss B. Macaulay, a cousin of the Yorkshire and England player, G. G. Macaulay. For Thirsk Ladies v. Fulford (York) Ladies a couple of seasons ago she followed up the capture of eight wickets with a not-out innings of 66, made in a partnership of 106. At one time a Mrs. May Brown had a regular place in the Wootton Courtei nay team, and Richard Daft, in his “Kings of Cricket,” states that the Bingham XI. always included one lady in their ranks —a Miss D who was i said to be able to hold her own -with | the best. Toward the end of 1926 the All-Eng-land 'Women’s Cricket Association was formed, with Mrs. P. Heron Maxwell,

a former president of the All-England ■Women s Hockey Association, as chairman of the committee appointed to arrange a programme of matches for the present season. Six counties and several women’s colleges are represented on this committee, of which two Kent women are the honorary secretaries. Many first-class players have owed a great deal to the tuition and practical help of their womenkind. It was said of Mrs. Martha Grace, mother of the three great brothers, E. M., W. G., and G. F., that she was a better player than her husband. Dr. Henry Grace. She understood the game thoroughly, and helped to teach it to her sons. Mr. C. J. T. Pool, the Xorthants batsman, and Mr. D. C. Collins, the Cambridge Blue and New Zealand cricketer, have both been proud to acknowledge that they were coached first by their mothers, while the late Harry Bagshaw, of Derbyshire, than whom no more enthusiastic cricketer ever lived, was bowled to by his grandmother when he was a small boy.