June 12, 1937
Eileen Ash makes England Test debut against Australia
TAsh was honoured at Lord’s in 2017 when asked to ring the bell to start Women’s World Cup
he day after Eileen Ash was born on Oct 30, 1911, Robert Falcon Scott and his doomed party set forth from their Antarctic camp bound for the South Pole. Last month, Ash celebrated her 110th birthday at her care home, St John’s House, in Norwich, continuing her innings as the oldest Test cricketer with a glass of red wine, she credits, along with yoga, “an apple a day” and “smiling a lot”, as the key to her longevity.
Ash is the youngest of 12 British supercentenarians, pushing on with a straight bat into their 12th decades or, in her case, as a seam bowler, cheerfully walking back to her mark for another spell, uphill and into the wind. She is the only female Test player to reach three figures (in years), 16 years older than South Africa’s Ronald Draper, the oldest surviving male Test cricketer and seven years older than the age that Draper’s compatriot, Norman Gordon, attained as the longestlived of all Test players.
In spite of her venerable distinction, Ash is the embodiment of the maxim that a good life trumps a long life. She played in every Test of England’s first home series in 1937, making her debut in the first match at Northampton and taking 10 wickets with her brisk medium pace in the rain-shortened, drawn series – including three for 35 in Australia’s second innings at Stanley Park, Blackpool. It was the one Test the home side won, which ultimately meant they retained the Ashes they had secured three years earlier at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Born in Islington, Eileen Whelan – as she was known before getting married – worked for the Post Office and rose to prominence in the game in the great pre-war hothouse of women’s sport, the Civil Service Sports Club. She also played for South Women, Home Counties Women and finally Middlesex in 1949, by which point she was also combining her on-field duties with the role of match secretary of the Women’s Cricket Association. The 1937 Ashes was something of a disappointment, given all the fundraising endeavours of the preceding couple of years to finance the Australians’ visit.
Designed to be a showpiece for the women’s game, the generally supportive coverage at the start petered out once it became * apparent that the tourists – who had been outplayed on home soil – had improved immeasurably in two years and hammered just about everyone but England. The Manchester Guardian, notably, accused the WCA, with some justification, of not “looking upon the game seriously”, embroiled, as it often was, in petty preoccupations about the decorum of players wearing socks as opposed to its preferred stockings. The Telegraph, regrettably, abandoned covering women’s cricket properly straight afterwards and would not resume doing so for several decades.
Ash spent the war and 11 years after working for MI6, doing her duty about which, The Telegraph’s Simon Briggs wrote five years ago, she “maintains a patriotic silence”. Her international return came on the tour of Australia in 1948-49, when England lost the Ashes for the first time, with Ash wicketless. But they beat New Zealand at Eden Park before the long journey home, as Ash ended her Test career with seven caps and 10 wickets at 23 apiece.
Ash turned to golf following her retirement from cricket, with the signed bat given to her by Sir Donald Bradman later, sadly, reduced to being stashed by her bed “in case of burglars”. She was honoured at Lord’s in 2017 when she was asked to ring the bell to mark the start of the Women’s World Cup. Her portrait now hangs in the ground’s pavilion.
Fame for a female cricketer in 1937 was unthinkable, but in the past few years Ash has become a celebrity, feted by Heather Knight and Joe Root, zipping around in her yellow Mini and starring in a reality show on which she retook and passed her driving test at the age of 105. A year older, in 2017, she reached for the skies in a birthday Tiger Moth flight and continues to bless her great fortune of good health with a close-knit family, love of sport and fun.