by It took almost nine years, but England will create history against India at Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium on Thursday by becoming the first women’s cricket team to play 100 Tests.
The much-anticipated meeting with India will be the 146th women’s Test in the format’s 89-year history but only a team other than England, India, Australia or South Africa have contested one since 2007 in respect – the Netherlands took on South Africa that year. .
England, who played the first ever women’s final in 1935 against Australia, are well ahead in the list of women’s Test matches, while Australia (77), the New Neither Zealand (45) nor India (38) are likely to surpass them anytime soon given the sport’s growing preference for shorter formats.
To put those figures into perspective, despite the 58-year lead England men had over their female counterparts after gaining Test status in 1877, they have played 1,066 red-ball matches.
England’s milestone, which is the first time in 18 years that India have hosted the team for a Women’s Test, is expected to come without much fanfare. But among those who will be interested is Carole Hodges, who captained England in their first Test against India in 1986 when the women’s game was light years away from the professionalism and money that the stars of the sport today.
Nat Sciver-Brunt, India’s most expensive overseas player after signing a £320,000 contract earlier this year, is now believed to be one of Britain’s five highest paid sportswomen.
The news that the England and Wales Cricket Board plans to invest £100 million in domestic women’s cricket over the next five years – as revealed exclusively by Telegraph Sport last week – is another indicator of commercial viability. the women’s game.
‘We had to buy our own caps’
Back in 1986, the state of affairs was very different. Hodges and her team-mates had to pay for their own cricket moons and to secure sponsorship for India’s tour of England, which took place across Wetherby, Blackpool and Worcester.
“We even had to buy our own Test caps,” says Hodges. “We were given a sort of shield-shaped badge that we had to sew onto the front of our caps. That was very entertaining. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not a sewer.”
At the time, England, who counted teachers and students among their ranks, were leading the way in driving the women’s game. The joke may have been nothing more than passion, but it was very serious about Hodges and her colleagues, who took annual leave from their day jobs to participate in the series.
Hodges has put her own job as a full-time bank clerk on hold to focus on her role as captain of the India series. Nerves got the best of her in the opening Test at Wetherby.
“I was scared,” she says. “I went out to bat and I could barely hold it because I was shaking so much. I did that too. I was out for seven.”
‘We didn’t know anything other than skirts’
However, Hodges overcame his jitters to grow into the league. She scored a half-century in the second match at her hometown in Blackpool before making a brilliant 121 in Worcester that was crucial as both sides played out a final.
Pleated skirts were the standard uniform for women at the time. “We all knew it,” says Hodges, who retired in 1993 before coming up short four years later during England’s series against South Africa. “They were split skirts, they were a bit like shorts under the skirts. We didn’t know anything else.”
But it wasn’t the team’s seemingly practical attire that held them back. “We were a bit disadvantaged in the first two Tests,” says Hodges. “India batted first in the opening Test and during those fielding attacks Jan Brittin, our star batsman, broke his finger in the field. So we were only hitting 10 in each inning.”
Brittin, one of the greatest batsmen the women’s game has ever seen, scored 1,935 runs in Tests for England between 1979 and 1998. She died of cancer aged 58 after a career that spanned 27 Test matches, which is still a record for women’s cricket.
In that inaugural series, England had to contend with India star Sandhya Agarwal who chalked up 132 in the second Test and 190 in the third. The latter held the record for the highest number of runs scored in a women’s Test for 18 years, until Kiran Baluch of Pakistan smashed 242 off 488 balls against the West Indies in 2004.
Hodges, who is fifth in the list for the number of Test runs scored for English women’s cricket with 1,164, went on to play in 18 Tests for her country. She retired in 1993 but was awarded her official Test cap only five years ago. “I’m certainly very proud of my small part in the history of women’s cricket, but of course there were many others before me,” she says.
I wonder what the early tractors of the sport would have left from that side in 1935 when Heather Knight’s team achieved the big 100.
