Women’s Day Prompts Calls for Women’s Memories
Visitors at Trent Bridge this season will notice a new addition in the Long Room: a new Honours Board commemorating the achievements by women cricketers in International matches.
But that it is not, by any means, the complete story.
The Heritage Team at Trent Bridge are keen to celebrate the hundreds of women that have played cricket for local clubs, work-based teams, and representative sides who, even if they do not qualify for a place on the Honours Board, certainly deserve to be remembered.
As part of an on-going project to investigate and record women in cricket in Nottinghamshire, volunteers at Trent Bridge are inviting people to share their stories, photos, and memories.
Project leader Samantha Ball said: “During the summer we will be marking the career of Nottingham’s Eileen White, a champion of women’s cricket from the 1930s-1950s and beyond, and we are grateful to her family for donating Eileen’s cricket archive to us.
“Eileen’s archive will showcase a major exhibition at Trent Bridge during May and June and inform talks and displays throughout the summer.
“However, we are still keen to hear about others like Eileen White who were active in the game as players, officials, organisers, supporters and volunteers”
On this International Women’s Day, the Heritage Team want to celebrate the achievements of cricketers at Trent Bridge and the development of women and girls’ cricket across Nottinghamshire.
“For those wanting to make their own history, this is such a pivotal and exciting time in the history, and future, of Women’s sport”, said Samantha Ball.
The Blaze are about to play their second season at the ground – team member Marie Kelly recently spoke about the additional boost this has given the women’s game “Training and playing at Trent Bridge has been great” – and Trent Bridge is once again hosting the women’s Trent Rockets in The Hundred competition, hoping to emulate last year’s record-breaking crowds,
The heritage team are “…determined to recognise those who have made their mark past and present, either at international, elite or recreational levels,” said Samantha Ball
To put that history into context, women played at Trent Bridge more than one hundred years ago when in 1908 a team of ‘Ladies of the County & City’ took on an XI of Crimea and Indian Mutiny Veterans in a charity match.
A ticket for that game is a prized part of the Heritage Store at Trent Bridge but Samantha Ball and her fellow volunteers hope that this appeal to people to search their family histories will produce many more equally fascinating and important exhibits.
Anyone with a story to tell about women and girls’ cricket and cricketers in Nottinghamshire can email the project team at Heritage@trentbridge.co.uk.
March 2024