The Spin | Battle anew: Scotland have eyes on historic England T20 World Cup clash

Tillicoultry is a small town in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, a few miles outside Stirling. It has a population of 4,600 – and a legitimate claim to being the birthplace of modern Scottish women’s cricket.

In early 2001, a small group gathered together one evening at a house in the town and, over cups of coffee, sat down to select the first Scotland team. The previous year, the Scottish Cricket Union (now Cricket Scotland) had decided to form its first national women’s team, and a “Scottish Select XI” had played matches against Northumberland, Cumbria and Durham. But now Scotland were hitting the big time: alongside England, Ireland and the Netherlands, they would compete in the 2001 European Championship.

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The host of that 2001 meeting? A then 19-year-old Kari Carswell (née Anderson), now to be found coaching the Scotland Under-19s. She is also the former head coach of the senior Scotland side, a recent head of women’s cricket for Middlesex and MCC, and has the small matter of 152 caps for Scotland under her belt.

It tells you everything you need to know about what a small world Scottish women’s cricket was in 2001 that Carswell was not just hosting the meeting, as part of the selection group, but that she was also one of the players selected to compete in the tournament. “There wasn’t that many people to pick from, to be honest,” she says.

“There was literally no structure in 2001. No women’s club cricket. No schools cricket for girls. That meeting was the start of trying to map how we were going to grow a competitive team, and grow a structure underneath it.” When you look at it like that, the fact that a mere two decades later Scotland are now in the UAE competing in their first World Cup is one heck of an achievement.

That they will face England on Sunday, in the penultimate Group B fixture at Sharjah, only gives the occasion added spice. As Carswell says: “You always want to get one up on England as a Scottish person.”

Historically, there haven’t been many opportunities for Scotland to have a crack at doing so: Sunday’s match will be the first England v Scotland T20 international. So far, the sides have faced each other only once in a formally recognised international: the one-day international that formed part of the aforementioned 2001 Women’s European Championship, hosted by Bradfield College in Reading.

It was Scotland’s first ODI, and the match proved to be a bit of a baptism of fire: seven Scotland players registered ducks, as a combination of Nicky Shaw, Laura Harper and Isa Guha (you might have heard of her) went on the rampage. Scotland were bowled out for 24, and England won by the barest of margins – 238 runs.

Opening the batting, Carswell made two before being bowled by Shaw. “I got an inside edge for my two runs down to fine leg and she [Shaw] absolutely sprayed me. That was probably my first experience of that and I was just like: ‘Oh my god, what is going on?’

“That game was a different world from what we’d been used to. We were nowhere. But everything’s got to start somewhere and I guess, looking back, that was the somewhere.”

Intriguingly, Scotland and England also have a good case for having contested the first ever women’s international match – although it isn’t counted as such. It was a two-innings match, organised by the English Women’s Cricket Association, and it took place at Worcester on 29 and 30 August 1932.

The WCA had formed in 1926, and in those early days of women’s cricket, there were strong English-Scottish connections: the first England captain, Betty Archdale, was educated at St Leonards School in St Andrews. Scotland were affiliated to the WCA, as the equivalent of an English county, and the Worcester match was designed to try to drum up interest in the sport north of the border.

The rules about player registration were a bit less strict in those days, meaning that the 21-year-old all-rounder Myrtle Maclagan, born to a Scottish father and an English mother – was selected for both teams. “I was very young, mad keen, and very bucked,” she later recalled.

Two and a half years later, at Brisbane in December 1934, Maclagan would bowl the first “official” ball in women’s Test cricket for England against Australia, take seven for 10, and go on to make the first Test century in women’s cricket, in the second Test at Sydney in January 1935. But in 1932 her allegiance was clear: “Naturally I elected to play for Scotland.” If only it had been so simple for Kirstie Gordon .

Maclagan dominated the match at Worcester, taking a combined six for 77, and top-scoring for Scotland in both innings, hitting a round half-century in the first and 41 runs in the second. But she could not quite prevent her side from defeat. Here is the day two report from the journalist (and WCA founder) Marjorie Pollard:

“At 2.30 Mrs Scott Bowden [England’s captain] declared. England were 213 runs ahead. Scotland started with Snowball and Maclagan – scoring slowly but surely. Then Snowball was bowled by Edge … Andrews made 20 and Maclagan still went on. But off the last ball before tea she was caught at point – a real skier.

“The last batsmen were cautious and with 15 minutes to go two wickets were still in hand. Could Scotland still make a draw of the game? Straker went in again and in one and one sixth overs, took the remaining wickets. It was a great game – leisurely and correct – but full of interest and good cricket.”

What went wrong between such a promising start in 1932, and the need for a from-the-ashes revival in 2001? As women’s cricket in England grew, it somehow never quite took off in Scotland in the same way. Scotland did not enter the first World Cup, in 1973, and the Scottish Cricket Union (founded in 1908) seem to have largely ignored the women’s game.

The Cricketer reported in 1977 that two English women, Mrs Greta Inman and Mrs Alison Wilson, had tried to fill that gap by starting a Scottish Women’s Cricket Association; but five years later, in 1982, Scotland declined an invitation to join the International Women’s Cricket Council, putting international fixtures out of their reach. Until, that is, Cricket Scotland took up the baton in 2000 and history was once again made, at that meeting in Tillicoultry.

Finally, in November 2022, Cricket Scotland announced the first paid contracts for women, describing it as a “watershed moment”. Carswell is astounded by the progress made in the past two decades. “If you had said to me in 2001: ‘You’ve got 23 years until you get to your first World Cup’, people probably would have bit your hand off for that. Because the level of resource that we’ve got in Scotland, compared to some of the nations that we’re now competing against, you can’t compare it. We can be really proud.”

What of Sunday’s match, against their English neighbours? “It’s no different than 2001 – Scotland go in as massive underdogs. But every underdog’s got to have their day.” England, you have been warned.

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