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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Windies ladies have really come a long way

Pub­lic­i­ty es­sen­tial for spon­sor­ship

by

20121005

At the age of eight, I be­came fas­ci­nat­ed with crick­et when Court­ney Walsh, Bri­an Lara, Carl Hoop­er, Kei­th Arthur­ton, Curt­ly Am­brose, Jim­my Adams were among the last of the re­gion's crick­et­ing gi­ants.

I of­ten im­i­tat­ed them when play­ing crick­et with my cousin, Nkosi.

When Bri­an Lara broke Sir Garfield Sobers record of 365 not out; I worked hard­er at per­fect­ing my bat­ting, imag­in­ing one day I might play for the Windies. I even adopt­ed the name Bren­da Lara.

But with my moth­er's con­stant re­minders that girls do not play sports, the gen­er­al lack of in­for­ma­tion about the game and the ab­sence of a fe­male role mod­el, my dream died.

To­day the re­gion stands ready to com­mit to mem­o­ry an­oth­er great West In­di­an crick­et team and even an­oth­er great crick­et­ing era as the women's crick­et team bat­tles the Aus­tralian team in the se­mi-fi­nal of the pres­ti­gious ICC World T20 Tour­na­ment in Sri Lan­ka.

One of the women be­hind the suc­cess of the cur­rent West In­dies team is Cus­toms Of­fi­cer Ann Browne-John. Al­though this for­mer T&T and West In­dies Women cap­tain is no longer ac­tive­ly play­ing, Browne-John is now an ad­min­is­tra­tor-the women's crick­et co-or­di­na­tor for the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) Amer­i­c­as.

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Browne-John re­called the start­ing point of her il­lus­tri­ous crick­et­ing ca­reer.

She said: "I was born in­to crick­et. My moth­er start­ed a crick­et club, Mary Girls' Crick­et Club and there­fore there were eight girls and four boys and all the girls played crick­et. Af­ter school, we would all go down to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah where my moth­er and the el­der ones played crick­et."

Browne-John's pro­fes­sion­al crick­et­ing ca­reer be­gan in 1970 when crick­et was in­tro­duced to St Fran­cois' Girl Col­lege and she has seen the evo­lu­tion of fe­male crick­et in the Caribbean over the years. She re­called when men would ha­rass women as they played in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, of­ten telling them to go home and cook or wash.

Al­though much de­vel­op­ment has tak­en place there is still a long way to go. T&T Guardian learned that there is great dis­par­i­ty in pay­ment be­tween men and women. Of­ten, the women play for free.

Browne-John said to­day's his­toric game au­gurs well for the fu­ture of the sport. She said ear­li­er on in the sport, pub­lic­i­ty was giv­en more to the men's team (al­though the women have been play­ing the sport since the ear­ly 1900s). Pub­lic­i­ty is es­sen­tial for spon­sor­ship, which is a ma­jor prob­lem the women face. Al­though the sport has be­come one of fastest grow­ing in the world among women, spon­sors have not been as forth com­ing. She said there are some spon­sors who have read­i­ly con­tributed to women's crick­et both in T&T and the re­gion while there are oth­ers (a ma­jor telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny) who, when asked, said no to the team's re­quest for spon­sor­ship.

An­oth­er wor­ry­ing fac­tor, she said, is the lack of a space for women's crick­et. Browne-John said al­though the na­tion­al team was promised a space, they are yet to re­ceive one and are con­stant­ly made to ask the men's clubs for use of their fa­cil­i­ties. This is some­thing she be­lieves des­per­ate­ly needs to change. The sport, Browne-John, not­ed has al­so dwin­dled in To­ba­go where, she said, much tal­ent re­sides.

Some of Browne-John's sen­ti­ments are shared by Mar­jorie Thomas, coach of the na­tion­al women's crick­et team. Thomas was en­cour­aged to play crick­et at 11 by her moth­er, De­lores who played for Queens­land Crick­et Club. Grow­ing up in To­ba­go, Thomas said, men were al­ways around to sup­port the women's teams in the var­i­ous dis­tricts. That has since changed and caus­es Thomas great wor­ry. Thomas stopped play­ing crick­et com­pet­i­tive­ly at 21.

Thomas found in­ter­est in the sport again, when in an at­tempt to re­vive the once vi­brant women's crick­et league, the WICB in­tro­duced a ju­nior coach­ing pro­gramme for teach­ers from dif­fer­ent schools. When she par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­grame, Thomas was a PE teacher at Barataria Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive (now known as Barataria South Sec­ondary).

Thomas she be­lieves many women are afraid of the sport be­cause of the hard ball (a cork ball is used to play the sport). On the is­sue of spon­sor­ship, Thomas thinks the lack of spon­sor­ship is a re­sult of low vis­i­bil­i­ty of women's crick­et.

"Women's crick­et has come a long way and it is ac­cept­ed. You now have the West In­dies women's team play­ing in the same coun­try as the men."

The West In­dies men are play­ing against Aus­tralia in the se­mi-fi­nal of the World T20 com­pe­ti­tion to­day in Sri Lan­ka and Thomas be­lieves that hav­ing the women play in a par­al­lel tour­na­ment in the same coun­try at the same time is a move that would help sup­port women's crick­et.

I won­der how dif­fer­ent life would have been if I met Ann Browne-John or Mar­jorie Thomas when I?was younger? Bren­da Lara might have ac­tu­al­ly be­come a re­al­i­ty.


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