Proposal for statue or gate in memory of female pioneer met with resistance from members
Heather Knight, the England women’s captain, has called on MCC to “move with the times”, after a proposal to erect a permanent memorial to one of cricket’s most pioneering figures, Rachael Heyhoe Flint, was met with resistance from sections of the club’s 18,500 male-dominated membership.
Baroness Heyhoe Flint, who died in 2017 at the age of 77, played 22 Tests for England between 1960 and 1979, at a time when the women’s game received scant attention or funding. She went on to become a leading administrator for the women’s game, and in 2014 was integral in securing England’s women their first tranche of ECB central contracts. In 2020, the ECB women’s regional competition was named in her honour.
However, her most significant contribution to the sport came in 1973, when she devised and established the first Cricket World Cup – a women’s event that preceded the first men’s tournament by two years. She went on to lift the trophy herself after England beat Australia in the final, which was held at Edgbaston because women at that stage were still not permitted to play at Lord’s.
Heyhoe Flint did eventually take part in the first women’s ODI at Lord’s, against Australia in 1976, and is commemorated by MCC with a portrait in the pavilion – a section of the ground from which she was barred until, in 1999, she became one of the first ten female members to be accepted into the club.
However, with Clare Connor, the ECB’s head of women’s cricket, set to become MCC’s first female president when she takes over the role later this year, the notion of a more fitting memorial to Heyhoe Flint, in the form of a statue or gate, has been dismissed as “gesture politics” by sections of the club membership.
“I think it would be misguided to erect a statue,” member and cricket author Mark Peel was quoted as saying in The Times. “It would put everything out of proportion. To compare like with like – men’s and women’s cricket – is plain wrong.”
There are currently three statues with a permanent presence at Lord’s – “Batsman” and “Bowler” at the Nursery End of the ground, and a bronze likeness of WG Grace, which MCC purchased from Gloucestershire after it was loaned to the ground for the 1999 World Cup. Grace, whose feats are widely credited with popularising the sport, is also commemorated with the main gates on the south side of the ground.
Robert Griffiths QC, a former chairman of Lord’s development committee, told The Times: “Diversity is one thing but a statue or gate has to be named on merit. As a player you wouldn’t put her in the same league as Don Bradman and Garry Sobers, even within the women’s game. I wouldn’t want it to be thought that Rachael didn’t make a huge contribution but WG Grace opened up the world of cricket to the heights it reached.”
However Knight, who dedicated England women’s World Cup win to Heyhoe Flint when she lifted the trophy at Lord’s in 2017, was unimpressed with such arguments.
“Come on MCC move with the times,” she wrote on Twitter. “Women’s cricket in England owes everything to Rachael and she invented the World Cup, without even mentioning her playing career #GetRachaelAStatue.”
Connor, responding to the row via Twitter, added that discussions with MCC were “very well advanced”, and that she had been unaware of any objections from within the club until reading the Times article.
“Yes, WG Grace ‘opened up the world of cricket to the heights it reached’ … to men,” she added. “RHF did as much, if not more, for the progress and inclusion of women in the sport.”