If you’ve been watching the dramatisation of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon you will have seen the portrayal of a ‘gentry vs workers’ cricket match on the beach, in which a young woman takes the place of one of the gentry at the crease. This would have been unlikely, but all-women matches did take place at the time.
The earliest I’ve come across was held at Bosham (pronounced ‘Bozam’) in Sussex. Bosham was where Danish King Canute sat on a chair surrounded by his courtiers and commanded the waves to go back, but got his feet wet. It was also the port from which Harold set forth in 1064 to negotiate with William of Normandy, failing to prevent the Conqueror’s visit in 1066. Bosham also features in the Bayeaux tapestry and in the Doomsday book.
But there’s another claim to fame. In the summer of 1787 it hosted a female cricket match, a description of which was sent in to the Hampshire Chronicle. The editor declined to publish it on the grounds it was ‘by no means fit for publication’. However, 8 years later the same paper did publish an account of an all-female cricket match played by 11 young women of Marchwood against a visiting 11. They were all dressed in white with green or blue ribbons (quite decent, then).
Thereafter other similar events are mentioned with increasingly frequency into the 19th Century. They were often arranged between a team of local married ladies against one of single girls. In those days bowling was generally underarm and it has been suggested that overarm bowling became popular because of women players having difficulty delivering underarm bowls with their voluminous skirts getting in the way.
(thanks to the British Newspaper Archive for the above)
The earliest I’ve come across was held at Bosham (pronounced ‘Bozam’) in Sussex. Bosham was where Danish King Canute sat on a chair surrounded by his courtiers and commanded the waves to go back, but got his feet wet. It was also the port from which Harold set forth in 1064 to negotiate with William of Normandy, failing to prevent the Conqueror’s visit in 1066. Bosham also features in the Bayeaux tapestry and in the Doomsday book.
But there’s another claim to fame. In the summer of 1787 it hosted a female cricket match, a description of which was sent in to the Hampshire Chronicle. The editor declined to publish it on the grounds it was ‘by no means fit for publication’. However, 8 years later the same paper did publish an account of an all-female cricket match played by 11 young women of Marchwood against a visiting 11. They were all dressed in white with green or blue ribbons (quite decent, then).
Thereafter other similar events are mentioned with increasingly frequency into the 19th Century. They were often arranged between a team of local married ladies against one of single girls. In those days bowling was generally underarm and it has been suggested that overarm bowling became popular because of women players having difficulty delivering underarm bowls with their voluminous skirts getting in the way.
(thanks to the British Newspaper Archive for the above)
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