ICC Women's World Cup 2009 - Features

Rachael Heyhoe-Flint explains how the Women's World Cup competition was formed

Friday, February 27, 2009 8:10:16 PM

Not many people know that the first-ever Women’s World Cup tournament in 1973 took place two years before the inaugural men’s tournament.

Even fewer will know the tournament owes its history to a random string of events, including speculative correspondence, a waste paper basket and a bottle of brandy.

A letter from the West Indies, addressed to Miss Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, via Warwickshire County Cricket Club in England, sparked a chain of events that led to the first ever global cricket competition.

”In the winter of 1969-70 I had an invitation to take a team to the West Indies, which came to me via Warwickshire County Cricket Club,” says Heyhoe-Flint, one of the all-time greats of the women’s game and a pioneer of the sport.

”At the time I didn’t know a team existed in Jamaica and as a team of amateurs, we didn’t have any money. Selection for overseas trips was sometimes based on who could afford to go rather than on merit.

”I was working at the Express and Star (newspaper) in Wolverhampton and I went into the library and was asking colleagues who on earth I could write to locally who may be interested in sponsoring a women’s cricket team.

”Somebody suggested contacting the Hayward family, who were a rich local family, and so I wrote to them.”

Unfortunately the letter to Sir Charles Hayward didn’t capture his interest and attention and it was thrown straight into the bin. However, his secretary mentioned the letter to Hayward’s son Jack, who picked it up out of the garbage and placed it in his blazer pocket where it remained until he emptied his pockets at his home in the Bahamas two weeks later. Upon re-reading the letter in the Bahamas, Jack Hayward immediately called Heyhoe-Flint to pledge his full support and funding for the trip, much to her surprise and delight.

”He said that he had read about our success in Australia a couple of years earlier and he was only too happy to help out,” said Heyhoe-Flint.

”I used to spend lots of my time trying to get even sponsorship for a cricket bat, so to get a positive response from Sir Jack was amazing.”

Such was the success of the trip, a further tour to the Caribbean followed a year later, leading to a strong friendship forging between Hayward and Heyhoe-Flint. It was through this friendship that a plan formed to stage the first ever global women’s cricket event.

”Sir Jack suddenly said one afternoon over a drink why don’t we have a World Cup for women’s cricket,” said Heyhoe-Flint.

”It was all blamed on a large bottle of brandy in the family home in Sussex.”

The first tournament took place in 1973, involving seven sides, with matches staged throughout the UK. England were the victors in a competition that was decided in the final group game against Australia, with Heyhoe-Flint receiving the trophy from Princess Anne, who she had befriended at a Daily Express Sports Awards a few years earlier.

”It was amazing to have Sir Jack and all his family, as well as all my family, watching from the balcony at Edgbaston. It was a great reward for him to see us win the Cup for England,” she said.

”Having a World Cup suddenly made it much easier to get sponsorship and led to a women’s match at Lord’s against Australia for the first time in 1976.”

Fast forward to 2009 and, with matches being broadcast to over 100 countries and global sponsors such as Pepsi, Emirates, Reliance Mobile and LG, the first ever ICC supported tournament will be very different to that of 1973. There will be more people watching than ever before but nobody in the women’s game will ever forget the contribution of Rachael Heyhoe-Flint and Sir Jack Hayward to the history of this competition.