Isa Guha and Ebony Rainford-Brent: Howzat for bowling a googly at the old boys’ club?

Two former England women’s cricketers have put cricket in a spin by becoming summarisers in the male- dominated public-school world of Radio 4’s Test Match Special

Josh Glancy Published: 23 November 2014

Eighteen years ago on a summer’s morning at King’s Cross, London, two young girls waited nervously for a train. They had been brought together by their parents, who were keen for their daughters not to travel alone. As the train ferried them to Nottingham, they started chatting. The subject was cricket. The destination was Trent Bridge.

“We got on like a house on fire from when we were 11,” says Ebony Rainford-Brent. For Isa Guha it was her first trip to an England development camp. Ebony Rainford-Brent, left, and Isa Guha are the first female summarisers for Test Match Special (TMS) on BBC “Ebony was the person I radio (Christopher Lee) leant on. She knew everyone already,” she says.

It was the beginning of an extraordinary friendship, one that has reflected not only the rise of women’s cricket in this country, but the changing nature of British society. From that camp, Guha and Rainford-Brent made their way through the junior ranks and into the senior team, becoming respectively the first Asian woman and the first black woman to play for England. Last week it was reported that they have become the first female summarisers for Test Match Special (TMS) on BBC radio.

For five decades TMS has been the preserve of public-school boys. It is from the TMS box that bufferish eccentrics such as “Johnners” (Brian Johnston), “Blowers” (Henry Blofeld) and “Aggers” (Jonathan Agnew), venerated for their digressions on tea-brewing or unusual pigeon activity, have shaped an entire cricketing culture.

Now Guha, 29, and Rainford-Brent, 30, are there too. First they provided analysis of women’s games; then they were invited into the inner sanctum, the men’s game. They are currently preparing for their first men’s cricket tours: Guha to Sri Lanka, where England begin a series this week, and Rainford-Brent to Australia and New Zealand for the World Cup, which starts in February.

They have been close friends since that moment on the station platform. “We’ve got all the secrets, had all the arguments; we’ve travelled the world, roomed together, went to uni together, retired around the same time,” says Rainford-Brent. In 2009 they even won a World Cup together, part of a golden generation of England female cricketers.

Their lives have many parallels but their journeys were quite different. Rainford-Brent grew up in Herne Hill, south London, where gang culture and football reigned. In 1989, when she was five, her 16-year-old brother Keith was stabbed to death.

“It was the sort of thing that was going on in our area,” she says. “I don’t even know how to describe it. I became quite numb, stopped communicating with people. My two other brothers went off the rails in a number of ways.” What stopped Rainford-Brent going down a similar path was cricket. A charity called Cricket for Change held a one-off session at her school. “I remember just hitting the first ball and thinking, ‘Do you know what? This is all right’.” She quickly found herself in the Surrey junior squad.

She never had a father around to bowl at her in the nets. “I didn’t grow up with him at all: I was a ward of court. I had a dad who had his own problems, so I was protected as a young child from him.” What Rainford-Brent did have was a mother who backed her, working night shifts at Sainsbury’s so she could travel to watch her play. “She wanted to be there as much as she could. She saw it was what I needed.”

By 19 Rainford-Brent had bowled her way into the fringes of the England squad, as well as winning a place at University College London to study chemistry (Guha went there too, to study biochemistry). She began training regularly with the senior team, but then it all fell apart. One day she fell over and couldn’t get back up. She had two prolapsed discs.

For a year she could barely walk at all. She wasn’t able to attend university and was told by her doctors she was unlikely to play cricket again. “I went into full-on depression, watched every episode of Homes Under the Hammer and ate cake for an entire year.”

Rainford-Brent thought she was finished. But with help from her brother, who gave her money for treatment, and by following the path laid out by the motivational coach Tony Robbins, she willed her way back into professional cricket. It involved years of physiotherapy, changing her posture, changing her shape, even changing her speciality, from bowling to batting. “I set myself two goals: to go back to uni and to play at the World Cup in 2009,” she says.

Guha’s career has been less traumatic. Coming from an Asian family who loved the game, she began playing cricket with her brothers, being made to bowl so they could bat. She was soon the best in the family and made her England debut at just 17; her fast bowling was a fixture in the England team for the next decade.

She remains the only Asian woman to have been an England regular. Even in the men’s game, the number of stars doesn’t correlate with the 30% of cricket players in England who have an Asian background.

Guha believes the path to the England setup for Asian cricketers, particularly girls, is not as clear as it might be. There are certain cultural expectations that can get in the way. “It’s not that parents don’t want them to play sport; it’s more a case of, ‘We want you to become a doctor’. A typical Asian mentality. Girls may be interested, play in the back garden with their brothers, their uncles and their mums even, but when they get to 15 or 16 they are steered towards education.”

There have also been difficulties in getting some Asian communities to engage with the idea of playing for England. Last week it was reported that Guha had called on Asian families to pass the “Tebbit test” — a reference to a comment made by Lord Tebbit, which asks whether Asian immigrants in England support their country of origin or their country of residence.

That wasn’t her exact meaning. What she really wants is a change of mindset. “Yes, I support England first and India second, but I don’t expect everyone to do that. It’s fine for parents to support their country of heritage, and the same for the youngsters, but it The two women could soon be commentating on Test matches at Lord’s (Stu Forster) shouldn’t deter them from wanting to play for England. They should be encouraged to play for England.”

It’s no surprise that these two women were chosen to become the first female summarisers on TMS. They are both eloquent and attractive. They represent diversity, their careers are landmarks and they have stories to tell. But, most importantly, they adore talking about cricket.

Guha, cautious for much of the conversation, comes alive when I ask her about the series in Sri Lanka — she thinks England and the embattled captain Alastair Cook have “a lot to prove”. Both are quick to point out that they don’t expect or desire any special treatment from the TMS boys’ club. “It’s not prim and proper,” says Rainford-Brent. “It’s just mates in a room talking about cricket.”

Have the men toned down the laddishness for their new colleagues? “I don’t think that they do tone it down just for us,” says Guha. “Why should they? We’ve grown up with it. I’ve played a lot of men’s cricket — I thrive off it. You do have different dynamics between men and women. But if they feel comfortable, then you feel comfortable.”

“Ish” and “Ebs” have come a long way since that morning at King’s Cross. Now they have entered one of Britain’s last gentlemanly redoubts — a clear sign that cricket’s reputation as a haven for stuffy white men is changing. “For sure, we’ve broken a lot of barriers together,” says Guha. “And it’s great to be able to do that with one of your mates. ”

@joshglancy

Ball-by-ball cricket commentary from the first ODI between Sri Lanka and England will be live on Test Match Special, Radio 5 live Sports Extra, 4.15am, Wednesday 26 November

6 comments

Ebony-Jewel Rainford-Brent 4 people listening

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Penny 7 days ago So did you forget about Alison Mitchell? She won't be very happy to have been left off the list as she was the first woman in that box.

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Tom Nicolson 9 days ago This is simply brilliant - two great stories. Good luck to you both!

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Mr David Taylor 10 days ago No wonder we lost the Empire!

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Bob Borsley 10 days ago Bent's full name is Ebony-Jewel Cora-Lee Rosamond Camellia Rainford-Brent. I doubt whether any of the public-school boys can match that.

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Tom Bloomfield 10 days ago Both seem far too pretty for radio.

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Bob Borsley 10 days ago They will probably be good additions to the TMS team. But it is wrong to paint the team as a homogenous group. It is not really true that '[f]or five decades TMS has been the preserve of public-school boys'. John Arlott was not a public-school boy, and Geoff Boycott and Phil Tufnell are definitely not public-school boys. And they have had a female commentator: Donna Symmonds of Barbados: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Symmonds

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