THE teenage batsman thwacked the ball towards square leg and started running, convinced he had plenty of time for a quick single. Fourteen-year-old Malvernian Bethan Manning had other ideas. Swooping like a swallow, she snatched up the ball at full speed and rocketed it into the stumps in one fluid movement. Bull’s eye. The bails flew and the astounded batsman, yards out of his ground, trudged back to the pavilion. ‘Holy cow! Did you see that?’ demanded her cricket master. ‘That’s one of best runouts I’ve ever seen in school cricket—boy or girl.’
Bethan, a Gloucestershire junior county cricketer and member of the school’s under14 team, was the only girl on the pitch, but her teammates celebrated her prowess rather than her gender as they crowded around to congratulate her. Passionate about cricket from her primary school days, Bethan and hundreds of her contemporaries embody a sea change within school sport. Over the past decade, Malvern College in Worcestershire, together with many of the great independent schools, once bastions of masculinity, but now co-ed, has welcomed girls to formerly male-dominated games with startling success—and many are now setting their sights on sporting careers.
Thirty years ago, Brighton College in East Sussex pioneered girls’ cricket. In 1990, future England women’s captain Clare Connor became the first girl to be picked for the 1st XI and the school later produced three members of England’s women’s World Cup squad, Laura Marsh, Holly Colvin, and Sarah Taylor, who had likewise honed their skills in the XI against the likes of Dulwich and Eton.
Esta historia es de la edición September 01, 2021 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición September 01, 2021 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds