Women's Cricket Association Founded — England, October 1926

Women's cricket had been played in organised form in England for over 150 years by 1926. Most teams were club-based; the absence of a national body meant inter-county and overseas fixtures were difficult to arrange.

Women's cricket in England had been organised through clubs since the founding of the White Heather Club in Yorkshire in 1887. By the mid-1920s a network of clubs played weekly fixtures across the south of England. The cricket week at Colwall in the Malvern Hills, organised by Marjorie Pollard, was the catalyst for a national governing body.

On 4 October 1926 — the final day of the cricket week — 70 players agreed to form the Women's Cricket Association. The first president was Mrs P.F. Heron-Maxwell; Marjorie Pollard, the leading all-rounder of the era, was on the executive committee. The WCA established standardised rules (women played with a slightly smaller and lighter ball than men, a convention that survived until 1999), agreed a national fixture list, and appointed a magazine — Women's Cricket, edited by Pollard — that began publication in 1930.

Within a decade the WCA had organised the first English women's tour overseas (Australia and New Zealand, 1934-35) and the first women's Test, played at the Exhibition Ground in Brisbane on 28 December 1934. England won by 9 wickets. The WCA remained the world's leading women's cricket administration until merger with the ECB in 1998.

“We have made it possible at last for women to play cricket as a serious game, properly organised, properly umpired, and properly recorded.”

The WCA grew through the 1930s, organised home Tests against Australia (1937) and New Zealand (1937 also), and became the model for the women's cricket associations subsequently founded in Australia, New Zealand, India, the West Indies and South Africa. It merged with the England and Wales Cricket Board in 1998.