Welcome to the Sporting Her Book Club! The Book Club is our new monthly series where we highlight books written about female or gender diverse athletes, administrators, and others involved in women’s sport. Our aim is to promote and create discussions about the many wonderful stories about women’s sport. These stories are plentiful and incredible, but much like the women’s sports industry as a whole, far too few people know they exist. We would love for you to get involved – read along, leave comments, and recommend books.
This month we look at The Bodyline Fix – How women saved cricket, by Dr Marion Stell. Dr Stell is an historian covering the sociocultural history of sport. The Bodyline Fix examines the fallout from the infamous men’s Bodyline test cricket series, and how reciprocal tours by the English and Australian women’s teams went a long way towards repairing not just sporting relations, but also diplomatic relations between the two countries. Born out of a biographical dictionary entry, Dr Stell expertly tells the stories of Australia’s first women’s national cricket team.
The Bodyline Fix – How women saved cricket
The Bodyline Fix is one of the most compelling books I have read. The immense collection of both primary and secondary research gives a great depth to the stories Dr Stell tells. As well as collecting a large amount of memorabilia from the 1934/35 and 1937 Australian teams, Dr Stell conducted a number of interviews with those team members still alive in 1990. It was upon rediscovering these interviews in 2020 that Marion Stell “realised their story was bigger than a handful of cricket games” and so The Bodyline Fix was born.
The interview excerpts are the real highlight of The Bodyline Fix. These excerpts allow the players to shine and their personalities become clear as the book progresses. These women, and their experiences, are the stars of The Bodyline Fix. Dr Stell does a fantastic job of keeping the players and their stories front and centre, rather than focusing any of the matches too much. This centring of the women who played in the first Australia versus England series really drives the book forward.
I particularly enjoyed the accounts of the excitement regarding the two teams – both the Australians and the English. In the wake of the bodyline series contested between the two men’s teams, there was a lot of pressure on the women’s teams to restore relations and play nice, clean cricket. They achieved this, and a whole lot more, proving they had skills at a level beyond what anyone expected. Matches, even those against smaller country and town teams, regularly drew crowds in the thousands. Many of the crowds would have been larger than many games around the world today. There was also a great deal of interaction between the women’s and men’s teams, something you don’t see much anymore.
Our Verdict
The Bodyline Fix is a must read, especially if you like cricket. Dr Stell masterfully mixes first and second hand accounts of the 1934-35 and 1937 series throughout the book. The interview excerpts complement the stories, and the photos at the start of each chapter were a lovely touch. These women and their stories could have easily been forgotten about, but through The Bodyline Fix, Dr Marion Stell has ensured they will live on forever.
The Bodyline Fix – How women saved cricket is available worldwide at bookstores, and on Amazon including Kindle. I If you want to join in the discussion, check out our social media platforms below. Find Sporting Her on social media by searching @SportingHer – Instagram // Twitter // TikTok.
The next book in this series is going to be Good for a Girl: My Life Running in a Man’s World by Lauren Fleshman. Get reading, and we look forward to seeing you here for the next Sporting Her Book Club.
