by Alison Mitchell
Thursday, August 23, 2001

Ann Woods is the Cricket Development Officer for Nottinghamshire, and for women's and girls' cricket throughout the county. She is also the only female staff coach in the country. And with nine years' experience as a Regional Development Officer with the ECB under her belt, she is well qualified to assess the role of women in both the playing and running of the game.

"Fifteen years ago, English women's cricket was in a similar state to Australia's," she says. "Yet [as was evident during this season's female Ashes] they've gone ahead in leaps and bounds and have thousands more playing than in this country."

Woods, 51, came to Engalnd from Sydney 30 years ago as an archeology student. A career which, she says with a wry smile, was destined never to take off.

She did not always love cricket. She recalls with some mirth how, as a child, she had to be dragged to the SCG by her father, who was a member there (and also a very useful rower). However, as with so many Australian cricket lovers, the backyard game played with siblings soon got her hooked. She went to Leicester University as a postgraduate and was a useful wicketkeeper and right-hand bat for the women's team. It is for Leicester WCC that she still plays, and since the regular keeper has fallen pregnant ( a recognised occupational hazard) she has recently picked up the gloves again.

Woods now presents a soft-spoken yet firm authority on the game at both grassroots and representative levels in England, where she has made her life.

What needs to change here is the thinking within the game that cricket belongs to men. The women's game will always be a minority sport unless a level of equality and mutual respect can be reached between men and women. But this respect will only come with good performances and international success.

And if English females are to perform on the pitch, more clubs need to have a full-time employee dedicated to the development of the women's game. At Nottinghamshire, Woods chairs what she praises as a "very active committee" but she can only dedicate around 20% of her time to the cause because of her other duties. Her position as a woman responsible for city cricket is largely unique, as most women in cricket development are employed to concentrate solely on the female side of the game.

As a woman working in a supposed male realm, does Woods come up against many professional barriers? "Oh yeah, all the time" she says, almost before the words have left my lips. "You have to be twice as good if you are to be accepted as a woman working in cricket." Woods still feels there is an overriding assumption throughout the game that women don't know anything about cricket - an attitude that has been instilled through years, nay, generations of wives and (if the boys are lucky) girlfriends moulding themselves into the role of tea-maker at village clubs up and down the country. This is a nut that has yet to be fully cracked, and it is proving harder than one of Mrs Beeton's famous rock cakes.

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