‘I’m not a tick box’: The woman aiming to revitalise Yorkshire cricket
For Dr Jane Powell, approval as Yorkshire’s first female president in 160 years came from some familiar, famous old names.
“Dickie Bird said to me, ‘I told them they should get a lass’ – that was a mark of acceptance to me,” she tells Telegraph Sport. “I met Geoffrey [Boycott] at Sheffield Cricket Lovers’ dinner and I sat next to him and his wife. What I like about Geoffrey and Dickie is they include me in discussions about what is happening on the pitch: ‘we should be bringing a spinner on now, I’m not sure why they have a fielder there’. I think it is a mark of acceptance that they are quite happy to talk cricket to me knowing I understand the game and can contribute.”
Powell captained England and Yorkshire, and – like Boycott and Bird – has spent a lifetime immersed in the game. Her long experience in sports administration and coaching gives her the perfect grounding to lead the club in her ambassadorial role at a time when it desperately needs to show a different side.
“It is a mark of the direction the club wants to go but also I feel very privileged to be able to say to young girls that this is a role you can now access,” she says. “Until I was offered it, the role was something I never even considered an option because 160 years of male presidents does not exactly send out the message a woman can do this role, so to be asked to do it I count as a real honour.
“There has been the odd bit of usual social media stuff where people have called me a tick box. They obviously don’t know me because I have never in my life been a tick box. I’ve probably been outside the box a few times but never a tick box, but that’s okay. I am more than happy to meet with them and ask why they feel that way and educate, really. We all have to keep learning.”
Yorkshire have endured so much in recent months. The club are still awaiting their fate from an ECB disciplinary commission for their handling of the Azeem Rafiq scandal and rebuilding bridges with the Asian community is a huge task. Powell’s role will be crucial as the club show they have changed and listened.
“On any given Saturday in Yorkshire there are a thousand games of cricket and we need to make them realise how important they all are, especially in the situation we have been in, because you only need one piece of bad behaviour and it will be magnified,” Powell says. “We have to make sure everyone has a part to play in making cricket the most inclusive sport in the country.”
Powell’s introduction into cricket is no different to many other famous old figures at Yorkshire – strong roots to her local club in Sheffield. “Dad played local league, and Mum was making the sandwiches. It looked like Dad was having more fun, so I asked if I could play rather than make sandwiches.”
She led England at the 1988 women’s World Cup – losing to Australia in the final – and played six Tests and 24 one-day internationals in total while captaining Yorkshire to the County Championship, but she played only once at Headingley, with the women’s game then confined to club grounds.
“People looked at you as if you had two heads if you said you played cricket because cricket was a boys’ game and what are girls doing playing it? My England blazer was the same colour as the Yorkshire blazer and I only had one because that was all I could afford. I used to sew my Yorkshire pocket badge over my England blazer pocket depending on which badge needed to be shown.
“Good luck to the girls now. I didn’t think I would see people paid in my lifetime, let alone going for £300,000 like Nat Sciver-Brunt in the WPL. You had to pay for everything when I played. The first time I got picked for England I had to buy a blazer, which was £75. In today’s money that would be about £350 – I did a translation at one point to get an idea of how much it cost. My first trip to Australia cost £300 and I found my monthly wage packet for that year and I only got paid £280 a month, so that gives you an idea of how much you had to commit to play for England and we were not from a wealthy family so I was out doing bar jobs, anything I could get, between training.”
While much has changed in the women’s game since Powell’s playing days, the needs of Yorkshire’s members have remained unchanged down the years. Her first members’ meeting recently was a quick introduction to the job and she says: “I went to the members’ forum, they were very welcoming and I started getting the grumbles that past presidents got: why did security check my handbag? That kind of thing. I felt involved already because they see me in that president role. They don’t see me as male or female. They see me as a president and want to make sure the president knows about this and that.”
