Facing up: Enid Bakewell

There is video footage on Twitter of you playing cricket this summer, aged 80!

I have a new knee now, so I can play again. When the ball hits it it doesn’t hurt because it’s plastic. I’m not bowling my left-arm spin yet. Because I was told to rest my arms I’m not throwing overarm at the moment. I need to work at making my arms strong again. My eyes are still decent so I can still see the ball; I only need glasses for close reading.

I play for a team down in Suffolk run by Karen Elliott. I get picked up by a lady coming through from Manchester. We mostly play over-70s men’s teams or against other women’s teams. They don’t swear, which makes a change. I went on a tour to La Manga in 2019 before I’d had my knee done. I managed to field in the slips and umpire. Sixty years of playing hockey had knackered my knees, so I’ve given up my hockey stick now.

You were also caught on camera in the crowd at Chelmsford watching England’s game against New Zealand. Did Tammy Beaumont’s 97 impress you?

Yes, but I thought they all played well. They have to now, because as professionals and with more players coming through they might be out of favour otherwise. I wish we’d been able to train together like they do now. We had to keep ourselves fit. I really enjoyed the day, although it took me four hours to drive home to Nottinghamshire due to traffic on the M1, so I didn’t get back until 2am. I hope to get to their games at Leicester and Derby, but maybe Hove is a bit of a stretch for me!

Ironically there is very little footage of women’s cricket from your era. Who were the great players?

Oh Rachael [Heyhoe Flint], mostly. JB [Jan Brittin] was a wonderful fielder. She could anticipate the ball from the way the bat was coming down. You never took a single to JB. But when Charlotte Edwards first came in for a trial game in the 1990s she made JB look like a novice. I was also very fond of my old opening partner, Lynne Thomas, who I had a good understanding with, and was another spin-bowling allrounder. Wherever we turned up to play she seemed to have an aunty living there!

The Aussies had some fine players too. Debbie Hockley of New Zealand was a good player. Jo Chamberlain would have been a star of the T20 era: so powerful and quick. I think JB was one of the reasons they brought trousers in for women: we didn’t slide quite so much as they do now, so we didn’t get so many grass stains, but she slid once when she was fielding and made a huge scar down her thigh. Having said that in hot weather, like in Australia, it was great to play in skirts. But they were a pain to iron and cost the earth.

How did you start in the game, at a time when cricket was not taught to girls at school?

We had a huge open road up to the station in my mining village and there was very little traffic around in those days, so we used to play football and cricket to our heart’s content. I was a tomboy and the boys used to come knocking for me to come to play with them. As we got a bit older we decided to play on a field next to the parson’s house. But all the lads wanted to hit the ball onto the parson’s garden to scrump all his apples. We then got kicked off the outfield of our local club.

My parents did spoil me a bit because I was an only child, and my dad had got a good wage so they bought me all the equipment. At Brincliffe Grammar School a teacher knew somebody who played opposite Nottingham University. By the age of 12 I was being pushed to play for Nottinghamshire. Back then there were lots of women’s clubs around here linked to works teams, like Player’s, Raleigh and Boots. When I first taught PE in an all-girls’ grammar school, I told the head of sport, a woman, that I intended to teach cricket in lessons, and she said: “Oh no, cricket is too unladylike!” So I had to do it as an after-school class. I always thought that playing hockey helped with batting, as we didn’t turn the sticks over back then, and the pass out wide was basically a cover drive.

Photos of you back in the 1970s – and that video from this year! – show you advancing down the track…

I think the reason I used my feet so well is that when I was a child we had to cut out our own pitch using scissors and hedge shears, and the rest of the grass was a foot high. So you had to get to the pitch of the ball or hit it on the full, else you had no idea how it would bounce. I was usually quick enough to pivot back if I missed it!

^{Rachael Heyhoe Flint leads England out for the first women’s match played at Lord's, against Australia on August 4, 1976}

What was Heyhoe Flint like? Was there any resentment about the way she courted popularity?

Without Rachael we wouldn’t have taken off professionally. Some strongly disapproved of that. She used to go round outside Lord’s playing a ukulele to drum up support for us. She got some folk on her side and eventually got women into Lord’s. She got us the first World Cup in 1973 because of her friendship with Sir Jack Hayward. But not everyone wanted Rachael to be captain. I remember there was a bit of a battle before that World Cup for the captaincy between Rachael and Audrey Disbury.

Audrey had been an ex-Wren [Women’s Royal Naval Service] and was a really tough woman. She wanted us going out there and scoring at four an over, whereas with Rachael if you were wicketless off the first few she was quite happy. So in trial matches it was quite interesting. They were both leg-spinners and both very competitive. I remember Mary Pilling being pushed as captain at one point. But I don’t think any of the players resented Rachael.

I was inspired by Rachael, really. But there was some upset from volunteers who had been doing the bookwork for the Women’s Cricket Association and publishing the magazine for 20-odd years that Rachael got paid commission from her work promoting women’s cricket. I remember once we went way down south for a game, it was freezing cold. Rachael was captain and she just disappeared. She was under an umbrella on the boundary giving a journalist an interview. I think she’d organised the game just for that! 

The first women’s match at Lord’s against Australia in 1976 must have felt momentous…

It was a big occasion. I’d even had my hair done that day. I think Rachael chose to field first so she could be the first woman to walk onto the field. We weren’t sure if we were allowed to go out through the Pavilion but the Aussies weren’t so keen on all the tradition and just walked straight through the Long Room, and we followed them! It’s true I did run myself out deliberately [for 50], and Chris Watmough at the other end told me off. I just thought Rachael had organised it all, so she should have the chance to bat. 

Since you were all amateurs, how did the WCA fund cricket?

Through subscriptions and sponsorship, mainly. Rachael organised sponsorship for the uniforms. There was an international fund we would pay into when we went to nets, and that raised the money for international teams to come over and for us to tour. That’s why we toured so infrequently. We did all kinds of our own fundraising. Once we made paper books; jumble sales; I grew and sold potatoes; another time we were selling chocolate at Trent Bridge.

I don’t think all the men who came along were believed by their wives unless they came home with some chocolate bars! We were supposed to play at The Oval once, and Surrey asked if we could find £20,000 to fund the gatemen. Well, we were amateur so we couldn’t afford that. We had women who would volunteer to do it. So I don’t think we ever played that match at The Oval. Now of course Ebony Rainford-Brent has a great rapport at The Oval. I call her ‘EB the Second’. Me being ‘EB the First’, of course! She’s an excellent commentator on the game, I think.

^{Bakewell ringing the Lord's bell during the men's Test against India this summer}

It must have been so hard juggling work, childcare and playing cricket as an amateur?

When I went to Dartford College to study PE I was advised against wearing my engagement ring because they might not have accepted married women there. Those attitudes did die out in my time. I once accidentally played cricket when I was five months pregnant. I didn’t even realise I was expecting. I was fielding off my own bowling and other people realised before I did! It wasn’t easy playing cricket with three young children. The purse-strings were really stretched and I was tired all the time. I used to be paid on Fridays, so on Thursdays we would have pancakes and orange juice for tea. I’d go to Safeway on a Wednesday afternoon when they’d sell stuff off cheaply.

My dad would cook Sunday lunch while I went down to nets at Trent Bridge. I had to work part-time as a swimming teacher so that I could get time off to play in the England matches. At one stage I delivered pizzas. I’d put the kids to bed every night and then go out and train. People can’t believe it when I say I played cricket for 20 years without being paid. I once met a bloke who ran me to the ground in a Jag. He offered me sponsorship money and I said: “Well, I’m sorry but I’m not allowed to take money for playing cricket.” We couldn’t even claim travel expenses. But I did find some sponsors at one point – my dad knew some people politically on the other side [in the Conservative Party] who had money. Then again, because I was a free agent and didn’t have a boss that gave me freedom.

You had a great tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1968/69, scoring more than 1,000 runs and taking 100 wickets...

It took us 27 hours to fly there, with about five stopovers. It was four and a half months away from home, and I had a two-and-a-half-year-old at the time, Lorna, named after Lorna Doone... I did have serious qualms about going away. People said, ‘She’ll miss you more when she’s four or five’, so I got talked into going. My parents looked after her during the week and my other half [Colin] at weekends. I said, ‘I’ll come back when the daffodils come up’. Of course it was warmer that winter and the daffodils came up earlier, didn’t they… She’s recovered and is now my most ardent supporter and an MCC member. It was amazing how flat the wickets were in Australia.

I remember we turned up at Adelaide [Thebarton Oval] and there were cracks all over it and I thought, ‘this’ll turn’. Well, it didn’t. I scored a hundred [113] in my first Test innings. It was a very tiring tour. A lot of the publicity we had out there was stuff like, ‘Rachael loses her lucky bra’. They didn’t really appreciate how professional we were in our approach. I remember when we landed someone wanted to take us straight to a baseball game, or there were champagne receptions when we just wanted to go and chill out. But we stayed with people in their houses, which was great. And we were given some really nice clothes by Marks & Spencer, even if they didn’t fit me very well because they were all the same size! One of our girls’ fathers died during the trip, and they didn’t tell her until she got back, because there was nothing she could have done.

^{Bakewell with Bill Edrich in 1974}

What was the gear like?

Well, we didn’t get given much! In the 1973 World Cup we were playing down in Exmouth against New Zealand. It rained. A lot of the girls didn’t have spikes. One of the umpires decided someone was going to have an accident, so she stopped the game. We were behind the run-rate after 15 overs and we lost the game on that basis! When I first went down to Gunn & Moore I was begging for kit. Luckily there was a picture of me in the paper with my bat all taped up, which Reg Simpson spotted and he said: “Oh, you’d better come down for a new bat.” Peter Wright has looked after me ever since. I still use Gunn & Moore now.

After you retired from England duty you led a tour to South Africa in 1983/84, which must have been controversial?

We were trying to keep women’s cricket alive in South Africa. It was an eye-opener, really, meeting maids who had left their families behind to work for white families. We did try to persuade them maybe they should treat black people on more of a par. At one place we walked into a blacks-only hotel, and got a few strange looks! We thought from reading the English press there would be guns on every corner, which there weren’t. Somewhere else we stayed in the same hotel as the rebel West Indian side. A few of their guys were trying to get some of our girls up to their bedrooms, which we put a stop to! I think that tour was why I didn’t get the MBE sooner, because we were deemed to have transgressed by going to South Africa.

You still canvass for the local Labour Party, and stood for Nottinghamshire County Council this year…

I’m sat talking to you with my Vote Labour badge on! There are issues in the local area I’m trying to sort out. There’s a bunch of overgrowing weeds three yards wide which Ashfield District Council and the county council each say is the other’s responsibility, so they haven’t been cut. I see councils trying to make lots of money by selling off land for housing. When this was a mining area it used to vote Labour. But once Maggie Thatcher sold off all the council housing, I would go around door-knocking and people would say ‘Well, I own a house now so I need to vote Tory’.

The Super Over

Which country would you like to move to if you could?

Oh, New Zealand. It’s like England in some ways but more laid-back. There’s not so much traffic there. If you wanted to stop the car and look at a river or something, you could do it and no one would honk their horn at you. The people are so friendly. I did want to move there but my husband worked for Rolls-Royce and he’d have had to start again, plus we had friends who had moved back from there homesick. I’d also like to visit the Caribbean. And if ever you go to Sri Lanka you must go to Galle.

What’s your favourite TV series?

Downton Abbey. I was delighted to meet Jim Carter (above), the butler, at Lord’s when Andrew Strauss organised that dinner [in 2017] for all the people who had ever played for England. I was very sad, though, because there were two empty seats where Rachael was supposed to be sat.

How else do you pass the time?

I like jigsaw puzzles. I’m on a 3,000-piece jigsaw as I speak to you. Sky Sports is my luxury. I did enjoy Liam Livingstone whacking that 92 in The Hundred. I do like watching T20. It’s a different mentality to the game than we had. And it’s been positive in introducing the public to cricket.

This article was published in the September edition of The Cricketer - the home of the best cricket analysis and commentary, covering the international, county, women's and amateur game