'President for all' Jane Powell relishing ground-breaking role at Yorkshire County Cricket Club

When Rachael Heyhoe Flint, the former England captain, was among the first women elected, she was heckled while addressing journalists outside Lord’s.

“Life as we know it is over,” shouted one stuffed shirt, no doubt before heading off in search of another G&T.

It is an era that Jane Powell, the new Yorkshire president, and the club’s first female president in a groundbreaking move, can well recall as someone who faced such barriers throughout her career.

Indeed, no more striking story is told by the former Yorkshire and England batter than a recollection of playing against Australia at Lord’s in the 1980s, when women were not even allowed to walk through the Long Room.

“The day before the match they timed us all going down the back stairs and out onto the field the back way,” she says, “but we couldn’t do it in less than three minutes to avoid being ‘timed out’.

“Of course, no one is sitting there ‘on your marks’, waiting for a wicket to fall, ready to set off just like that. A wicket falls, then you’ve got to find your gloves, grab your bat, and so on; no one is ready to run down the stairs.

“They had to relent in the end and allow us all to walk through the Long Room, and to this day I’ll never forget one of the old guys there tutting and going, ‘I never thought I’d see women in here’.

“It wasn’t the best preparation when you’re walking out to bat, and I think I was awful that day because I was so frustrated and annoyed with the response that we got.”

Fast forward to now and the situation could not be more different.

Women’s cricket is riding the crest of a wave, and the good ship Lord’s is a welcoming vessel.

“It’s sad to think back and to say that in my lifetime that sort of thing happened, but it’s also fantastic to be able to see in my lifetime what Lord’s is doing now,” says Powell.

“The World Cup final there in 2017 was great, and the difference now is phenomenal, the way that the girls are welcomed. Middlesex now play county women’s games at Lord’s, and who would have thought that?

"Rachael Heyhoe Flint did a massive job to get us to be able to play at Lord's in the first place, so it’s all credit to her, really.”

Heyhoe Flint, who died in 2017, aged 77, was as synonymous with the women’s game as W.G. Grace is with the men’s game; how fitting that both have a gate named after them at the ‘home of cricket’.

Powell’s twin sister, Jill, actually made her solitary Test appearance when Heyhoe Flint played the last of her 22 Tests against West Indies at Edgbaston in 1979.

Jane Powell’s international career (six Tests and 24 one-day internationals) came a little later, between 1984 and 1990, although she did make a number of 12th man (or should that be 12th woman?) appearances prior to those dates.

Either way, it was a career that saw her captain England in the 1988 World Cup final in Melbourne, and in which she achieved the distinction of a Test century - 115 not out against India at Blackpool in 1986.

She came close to following that with an ODI hundred against Denmark at Nottingham in 1990, ending 98 not out, while she led Yorkshire to a number of County Championship titles - “four or five”, she says imprecisely, which somehow adds to the endearing modesty.

Jane and Jill fought old-fashioned attitudes as much as their cricketing opponents to make their way in the sport, one in which the family was steeped.

“We had a very progressive father,” says a woman who was born in Sheffield and attended school in the city with the athlete Lord Sebastian Coe.

“Dad played local league cricket in and around Sheffield, and he put us in his team in the Midweek Alliance and he used to revel in that because we were quite good, I suppose.

“Batters would try to take a single against us, but we had very good arms; Jill actually threw the javelin for England. The two of us could ‘ping’ people quite quickly, so we got lots of run-outs and it quickly went round the league - ‘don’t run to those lasses’.

“But to start off with, you were mocked, and your dad was mocked because he had two girls playing for the team.”

Powell is now performance manager for England Disability Cricket and provides advanced coach support at the England and Wales Cricket Board to develop coaches from under-represented groups, including women. Even her post-playing career has known examples of prejudice, subconscious or otherwise.

“I remember when I was coaching England,” she says, “I had an assistant who was male and every time we turned up at a ground people would address everything towards him. Even though he would say, ‘She’s the head coach’, they’d look at you in disbelief.

“But I just loved doing what I did, so I wasn’t going to be put off by poor comments, or poor behaviour. Sometimes we turned up and the pitches weren’t prepared, and it was like, ‘Oh, it’s only the women playing’.

Anyone unaware of Powell’s track record and involvement in the game might be tempted to view her appointment as Yorkshire president as what she herself describes as a “tick-box exercise”.

Particularly so, one supposes, after all that has gone on at Yorkshire in recent times, but this is a big moment for the club and a merited one for Powell, now part of a 160-year lineage that includes the great Lord Hawke, who held office for 40 of those years from 1898.

“It’s a great honour and a real privilege to be the first woman president, and I do think ‘first’ is the important thing because I hope there are many others who follow me,” she says.

“I was at Sheffield Cricket Lovers’ Society the other day, and Geoff Boycott was there and Geoff Cope (two former presidents), and it’s just lovely because they were very encouraging, very welcoming, and I just hope this is really positive for everyone.

“I know there’s a few people who think that it’s a bit of a tick-box exercise; well, I’d love to meet them and explain what my background is, and why I think I can do this. Also, how I can help them because if they’ve got an issue, let’s see if we can help.”

With Tanni Grey-Thompson on the new board too, along with Kavita Singh, Lucy Amos and Leslie Ferrar, there is an increasingly strong female presence bringing a wide variety of skills and experience.

Powell herself spent 25 years as a teacher, while she also played hockey for England, was a junior representative badminton player and has worked in lacrosse in a full-on life.

She is delighted, of course, by the great evolution of the women’s game, describing The Hundred as “groundbreaking for the women” although “the jury is still out with regards to The Hundred for the men”. As she reflects on how women’s cricket is perceived today, she must marvel in astonishment at the sums of money available in the new WPL, for example, circa £300,000 for the very best players.

However, she adds: “I would have played for nothing in any of those leagues because I enjoyed travelling, meeting different people, the challenge of different conditions and the cricket of the highest level I was able to play.

“I just think money’s going to start dominating, sadly, because as a young girl I played because I loved it and if somebody gave me a shirt, for example, I used to feel grateful because we had to buy our blazers, we had to buy everything.”

Powell will be attending as many games as possible in her role at Yorkshire across the spectrum of men’s, women’s and disabled cricket.

She wants to be a president for all - a target that would be a fitting legacy.

“It’s about making sure that people in and around Yorkshire know that we care about them deeply and that they’re really valuable,” she says. “They are the people who keep the sport going in the county.

“It’s important to get out to the grassroots as well as the elite and performance end of the game, so that people know that we do care about what they’re doing and that we do want to support them.

“Yorkshire are trying to move forward positively in every aspect of the game, and that’s what we’ve all got to do now - move forward with positivity.”