Photo of Virginia Woolf: courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Wikipedia

An English lady gave birth to modern cricket

The game of cricket began in England centuries back. Date of origin cannot be pinpointed. Even as late as mid 19^th century cricket was a rural pastime for men with under-arm lob-bowling and hockey-stick shaped bats! Betting was rampant among the spectators.

Actually cricket acquired its most important weapon – over-arm bowling – because of a lady, Christina Welles. Christina would bowl to her brother John at their backyard. Because of the fashionable billowing skirts of those days, she had difficulty in bowling under-arm and so for her own convenience she raised her arm and bowled either over-arm or side-arm. John found it difficult to play the high bouncing deliveries with the hockey-stick shaped bats.

This simple act laid the foundation of the most profound, far-reaching consequences of the game. All lovers of cricket owe a deep sense of reverence to the creative genius of a young lady.

Very sensibly John Willes followed his sister’s example and tried over-arm bowling with his men friends. He was very successful as a bowler with his over-arm action. Everyone was up in arms at this revolutionary idea. However, ultimately sanity prevailed as the men realized that over-arm bowling made the game far more interesting than mere under-arm lobs.

Thus began the prime and most radical evolution of cricket: over-arm bowling.  Naturally of course, a lady conceived and gave birth to the game as we know of it today!

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Since cricket is full of literary efforts of men, how can women authors be in the wilderness?  It is true that while many prominent men have mentioned the game in their writings, hardly any prominent lady author in the past has put her cricketing thoughts to paper and pen.

But former journalist Soma Mukherjee – who shares wife Seema’s and my loyalties to Jadavpur University Arts College – has unearthed eminent lady author Virginia Woolf as a glorious exception of a woman mentioning the game, “…Vanessa (sister) and I were what we call tomboys; that is, we played cricket, scrambled over rocks, climbed trees, were said not to care for clothes and so on…" 

Co-researcher Seema adds that Kolkata-based writer Showli Chakraborty while interviewing the historian William Dalrymple – who himself takes pride in his Bengali connection – found that Virginia Woolf had Bengali maternal ancestry, resided in the French colony of Chandanagar in Bengal and that William Dalrymple himself is her great grandnephew.

Ladies and cricket have been the best of companions over centuries. Christina and Virginia have left their imprints on the game on and off the field!