Louise Browne-Jackson takes the bat at the U.S. American Indoor Cricket Club on Long Island, N.Y. (Photo by Shanthi Venkataraman/CNS)
Louise Browne-Jackson thought her cricketing days were long gone
As the daughter of two cricket players, she grew up playing the game in Trinidad, representing her country in 1973 in England at the first women’s cricket world cup. In 1976, as the captain of the first West Indies women’s cricket team, she led a series against Australia and India at a time when women playing professional cricket at the international level was still something of a novelty.
But her cricket career ended when she moved with her family to New York from Trinidad in 1990 and she settled into a normal life as a middle school language arts teacher in Brooklyn.
So when the U.S.A. Cricket Association (USACA) approached the 58-year-old to help kick-start a women’s cricket team in the country in early 2009, she could not resist the chance to get back into the game. “I couldn’t say no,” says Jackson. “I love cricket.”
The USACA is trying to lure former female cricketers like Jackson out of retirement to help bring the sport to the U.S. The experiences of these women are crucial to the organization in its efforts to educate young girls about the game. “We tell them even if you can’t hold a bat, we are willing to train you,” says Venelda Wallace, women’s cricket coordinator for the New York region and an accountant by profession. For the former professionals, it’s a chance to see the sport that they love flourish in their new home. “I am now a resident in the U.S.,” says Jackson. “Anything I can do to build cricket in this country, I am willing to do.”
Cricket baffles most Americans who grew up with baseball. Yet it’s the second most popular game in the world after soccer. The game is like baseball in that it’s a bat-and-ball game in which the batting team tries to score as many runs as it can, while the fielding team tries to contain the runs. There are two bases on either side of a 22-yard pitch called wickets, and the batsmen run between them to score runs. The team does all the batting in one long inning. The length of the matches can vary from three hours in the game’s latest avatar, called Twenty20, to five days in its true-blue form, test cricket.
Historically, men’s cricket has always received a lot more media attention than women’s cricket. This is despite the fact that women have played the game since 1745 and were the first to play World Cup cricket in 1973, two years before the first men’s cricket World Cup. Cricket observers attribute this disparity to the fact that men’s cricket is a more powerful game. But in 2005 the International Women’s Cricket Council came under the auspices of the International Cricket Council (ICC), the governing body of teams from 104 cricket-playing countries. Since then there have been more serious efforts to promote women’s cricket.
Today 98 of the 104 countries have some kind of organized women’s cricket, thanks to a mandate from the ICC that all member countries incorporate women’s cricket in their developmental activities.
In the U.S., cricket still remains a minor sport played largely by immigrants. Women’s cricket has been practically nonexistent. But the USACA has been stepping up efforts to promote the sport in the past few years.
It got a major boost when the country’s first cricket stadium was opened in Lauderhill, Fla., in 2007 to cater to the city’s large Caribbean population. With the presence of a 5,000-seat, international-quality stadium, the USACA was able to persuade the ICC to allow the U.S. to host the ICC Americas Women’s Cricket Tournament in 2009.
The USACA had to scramble to put a women’s team together. Using word of mouth, organizers were able to reach a number of former professional players who had once played on the West Indies women’s cricket team and were now settled all over the Northeast. “We had to cajole them,” says John Aaron of the USACA, talking about early recruitment efforts. “Some of them had children. Some were on the heavy side. … Twenty years is a long time away from the sport to come back and run 22 yards.”
The average age of that U.S. team, which included players from mainly the Caribbean and a few players from India, Pakistan and Australia, was 40 — well past the prime age for a pro cricket player. “I was absolutely unfit,” says Jackson, laughing. But with experience on its side, the U.S. team was able to finished second in the tournament, losing to Canada. Wallace hopes that the early success of the women’s cricket team will inspire younger women to take up the sport.
Over the past year, four other teams have been formed across the country, in New York, New Jersey, California and the Northwest. In June a tournament will be held in Cupertino, Calif., to once again select a national team that will go on to play in the regional World Cup qualifier against Canada in July. If the U.S. team wins, it will go on to the ICC Women’s World Cup global qualifier, to be held in 2011.
Presently, the women in New York are undergoing vigorous physical training sessions and are practicing every weekend, rain or shine. It takes a minimum of 11 people to form a cricket team. But only eight or nine actually make it to practice on a good day. There are still not enough players in New York City, so the team draws a few players from Delaware, New Jersey and Washington.
The USACA is trying to attract younger girls to the game by introducing it at the high school level. Twenty-eight schools in the Public Schools Athletic League in New York now field teams. However, the teams are still predominantly male, and only a handful of girls have taken to the sport. Aaron at the USACA says negotiations are taking place with the Department of Education to conduct interzonal cricket tournaments, where girls interested in playing cricket can be pooled together from different schools in each zone. The USACA is also targeting softball players. “Girls who cannot qualify for varsity softball can make the transition to cricket,” says Aaron.
Wallace says the team will slowly phase out the older players once younger women enter the game. “We will squeeze them out until the pump goes dry, and then when they can’t do it anymore, we will find something else for them to do,” says Wallace. “But because we are at this stage where it is developing, we can’t set anyone aside. We need to make use of everyone.”
The senior players are more than willing to step aside in a few years to make way for a younger team. “I know my involvement in the playing of the game will be short,” says Jackson. “But I just want to get the game going so that younger players will see us playing and get involved.”
