Marjorie Pollard — Founder of English Women's Cricket Journalism

Women's cricket in England had been organised through clubs since the 1880s but lacked a national governing body, a national fixture list and dedicated journalism. Pollard provided all three.

Marjorie Pollard was born in 1899 and learned cricket at the Old Vicarage Ladies' Cricket Club in Northamptonshire. By the early 1920s she was the leading all-rounder — opening bat and slow left-arm spinner — in English women's cricket. Her playing career produced over 100 first-class hundreds (in informal women's cricket, no formal averages were kept) and she captained club sides into the 1940s.

In 1926 she organised the women's cricket week at Colwall in the Malvern Hills that produced the foundation of the Women's Cricket Association on 4 October. She was on the WCA executive from its formation. In 1930 she launched Women's Cricket magazine, the first dedicated women's cricket publication, which she edited until 1967.

Pollard also wrote on women's hockey (she captained the England hockey side) and on women's lacrosse. Her dual role as the country's leading woman cricket player and the country's only woman cricket journalist made her the central figure in the inter-war development of women's sport in England.

“We had to do everything ourselves — play the cricket, write the reports, persuade the editors. There was nobody else.”

Pollard continued to play, organise and write through the 1930s and 1940s. She edited Women's Cricket until 1967 and was instrumental in the development of the post-war women's game. She died in 1982.