Let's Hear It For The Girls!

 Hands up if you knew that for a short while we ran a Women’s team? I doubt that there will be  too many still around who can remember it, but yes we briefly ran a Women’s XI.

It’s probably true to say that girls had been few and far between prior to the turn of the century with Hilary Murphy in the late 1980’s a rare exception. But, with the advent of an under 11 side in 2000 that slowly began to change and we have seen more and more girls appearing in Lostock colours. The growth in the women’s game has obviously helped too as more barriers to girls playing have been removed.

As with the under 11’s in 2000 the driving force behind the formation of a Women’s team was Peter Rutherford who by 2005 had progressed to being heavily involved in coaching at Lancashire Women. Despite the fact that we were having major issues with our ground and the BDCA executive (or maybe because of) interest at the club seemed to be reaching an all time high. So much so that over the winter of 2005/6 we found that we had enough interest to form not only a 3rdXI but also a Womens XI.

Some taster training sessions were held over the winter months which saw a mixture of young girls from the club, parents who’d got the bug and girls from other clubs who wanted to try women’s cricket as well as mixed junior cricket. Back then there were relatively few options for an all female team—apart from a fledgling Lancashire Women’s Cricket League, with the strongest sides travelling to play against teams from Yorkshire or Cheshire instead. We were too late to enter a team for the 2006 season so instead had a programme of friendly games mapped out to get us under way. However the weather that summer played havoc with our plans and it wasn’t until the middle of the season that we actually got to play a game when we met an equally inexperienced Golborne team in a 20 over game. Whether through curiosity or not there was a decent crowd at Simpsons Field to witness a little piece of history.

What seemed like a very promising start to our story must be tempered by saying that Golborne had a much younger side than us, but you can only play what’s in front of you and we crushed them by 110 runs as Golborne were bowled out for 22 in reply to our 132-2. The historic first Women’s XI to take the field consisted of Caroline Blundell*, Chloe Wallwork *(Walshaw), Elissa Murphy*, Emily Giles, Julie Burrell, Rachael Stott (Spring View), Louise Lonanhan*, Jess Mills, Lucy O’Dwyer, and Emma Stott (Spring View). (Those marked * were Lancashire juniors)

Sadly, that was to be our only game of the season as the weather caused all the remaining games to be called off apart from a return game with Golborne which unfortunately they conceded. However it had whetted the appetite and several of the girls made up for it by playing in the 3rdXI so it wasn’t altogether a waste.

With interest still high we entered the LWCL for 2007 and hopes were high for an exciting season. The first ever competitive match took place on 3rd June 2007 when we travelled to play a very strong Southport & Birkdale and pushed them all the way before eventually going down by 3 wickets. The 11 ladies who made history that day were :- Helen Smith ©, Kate Olivier*, Jess Mills, Megan Fairclough*(Egerton), Emily Giles, Elissa Murphy*, Ronnie Mills, Emma Stott (Spring View), Lyndsey Harris, Julie Burrell and Emily Calvert. Batting first we made 109 with Jess hitting 30* and Southport replied with 111-7 with Emma taking a remarkable 5/12.

Next up were the eventual champions Chorley who beat us by just 19 runs after a battling effort against an experienced side. Rachel Dakin another Lancs junior made 42* in our total of 113-7 after Emma had again shone with the ball taking 3/21 in Chorley’s 132-9.

A tie followed against Trafford which meant after 3 games we had held our own against what we were eventually to be the top 3 in the table but then once again the weather reared its ugly head and we never got the chance to play the bottom two. Still it had been encouraging enough of a start to want to carry on.

All that was to change though as we got the news that we had been dreading when we were told that we would have to vacate the ground at the end of the 2007 season. Although we were able to secure somewhere for the senior men to play (ground sharing at Haydock), and the juniors (Bolton School), the cost and logistics of finding somewhere for the 3rdXI and Women’s XI to play as well proved too much of an obstacle and reluctantly we had to withdraw both teams for the foreseeable future until we once more had a ground of our own. The 3rd XI of course is back up and running and maybe, one day, if there is enough interest we can revive the Women’s XI too. 

Was it a success? In terms of results maybe not but terms of generating interest it certainly succeeded. Several of the Lancashire girls who appeared for us went on to reach senior level at Lancashire and their clubs and indeed Megan Fairclough has the honour of being the only Lancashire captain to lift the Women’s County Championship trophy (winning the T20 trophy as well for good measure) around 10 years later. As for own home grown players several of them went on to represent Lancashire at various levels and indeed continued to do so in later years.

Emily Giles played at under 13, 15 and 17 levels. Lyndsey Harris played under 13 and under 15 levels. Lucy O’Dwyer played under 13’s. In later years Alice Martindale represented the under 11s.

But, by far the biggest success story has been Jess Mills. Jess played for the club from 2002-2013 representing us at all levels from under 13 up to the 2ndXI. A Medium paced swing bowler her best figures were 5/10 v Golborne for the U17s in 2006 whilst her best senior figures were 4/29 v Newton Heath 2nds in 2010.

Jess represented Lancashire at under 15 and under 17 levels without getting the chance to play in the 1st team but it was to be a move to Scotland that proved to be a game changer for her. In 2016, she was chosen to play for the Rest of Scotland in some inter regional games and then, on the back of that, in 2017 & 2018 went on to represent Scotland A in the County Championship playing 10 games in all which brought 15 wickets with a best of 4/10 against Northumberland and 4/12 v Cumbria. She had a remarkable economy rate of 2.68 over those 10 games too. She also represented Scotland A in 10 T20 games in the Women’s T20 County Championship with slightly less success. The icing on the cake though perhaps was a place in the Scotland squad for the World Cup qualifiers in 2018 but unfortunately she was confined to just an appearance in a warm up game v Bangladesh in Rotterdam where unfortunately she didn’t get chance to bat or bowl.

So that’s it—a brief history of our Women’s XI and hopefully an inspiration to our current crop of young girls.