Cricket

Elie

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I have a few, might write some others later but here’s one. When I was around 12 I played for a mixed gender cricket club- I was the only girl though. One week when I went to training there was a new coach, male. We started playing and then it was my turn to bat, with the new coach bowling. I walked up and he said “don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you” with the sort of encouraging smile you might give to a very small child. I felt a sort of indignation and managed to hit the ball very hard over the boundary, at which point he sort of turned to some of the boys and went “oh, she’s alright” then looked back at me and told me “well done sweetheart”. I just felt patronised, and the condescending manner he spoke to me just made me feel so unimportant. Don’t speak to women or girls like this please guys

anon

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i started playing cricket in primary school. my friend and i were the only girls on the cricket team and we played excellently, none of the boys on our team has anything against us, etc. we were an extremely strong team – we qualified for the national youth finals. my friend and i were so excited to be playing nationally at such a young age but we recieved an email: girls are not allowed to compete at the youth finals i have never forgotten that moment, and still believe that there is so much sexism in cricket, even in 2020 and the 21st century

Holly

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I play a lot of cricket in school and for a club. At a school match last year I opened the bowling and took a wicket, clean bowled on middle stump. My mum was taking photos as she is a bit of an amateur photographer. She got a photo of the moment that I took the wicket. In the photo you can see the batsman at the other end’s face and he looked so shocked as if to say “what just happened? He was bowled out by a girl!” I often get odd looks when I play cricket boys often look at me like that. It’s really demoralising and I absolutely hate having to feel like I have to prove to them that I am good enough

Anonymous

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Everyday sexism I took my daughter to a women’s cricket match the other day. We sat next to an adult son and father who expressed loudly some questionable views about a variety of topics (egg donation, transgender people etc.). They spent the match sarcastically applauding any mistakes the teams made, shouting “just hit the ball” and generally rubbishing women’s cricket. (The home team contained 3 English players who have recently won the World Cup.) By the end of the first innings, I had had enough. We packed up our things and moved to where more families were sitting. As we left, I told the men they were pathetic. My daughter loves sport (as do I), and we go to lots of football and cricket matches. We now attend football matches with friends due to the toxic atmosphere even in the family stands of our local team. I hadn’t expected to experience similar behaviour at a women’s cricket match.