Clare Taylor’s sporting story crosses two England teams and two World Cups. Long before she became known in cricket as a pace bowler with more than 100 international wickets, Taylor was a footballer from Huddersfield trying to find a place in a game that often told girls they did not belong.
Now 61 and working with the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit, Taylor reflected on that journey in an interview with The Hindu at Old Trafford during the T20 Women’s World Cup. The conversation showed how her football upbringing shaped the athlete she later became in cricket.
Football came before cricket
Taylor said her earliest sporting memories were clearly from football. She grew up in Huddersfield, where there was a grass area near where she lived. Boys were usually the ones playing there, and she joined them. She was also a Liverpool supporter, drawn to a side that had players such as Kevin Keegan and Terry McDermott.
Like many children, she first wanted to be a centre-forward because scoring goals was the main attraction. Over time, she moved further back on the pitch and came to enjoy playing as a sweeper or centre-half. Taylor felt that reading the game was her main strength.
Her first major push came at school. A Physical Education teacher, Ian Mackay, encouraged her and helped her get into the boys’ team. The selection brought local attention, but it also exposed the restrictions girls faced. A local newspaper ran a line saying, “Future Pele can’t play. She is a girl.”
Playing despite barriers
Taylor said the local football association also objected to her involvement because she was a girl, citing insurance concerns if she was injured. Her parents responded by taking out private insurance so she could continue. That allowed her to play for a team in Bradford, and from there she began being picked for representative sides.
She later played for Bronte Ladies in Bradford before moving to Knowsley, a team near Liverpool. With the beginning of the National League, Liverpool’s men’s club took over the running of Knowsley. For Taylor, that meant she eventually played for Liverpool, a personal highlight given her support for the club.
That period was still far from professional in the modern sense, but Taylor recalled that it became “a little bit more professional without being professional.” It helped her see that there could be more opportunities in women’s football than before.
How football helped her cricket
Taylor’s football background later became an advantage in cricket. She said she was fitter than many of the cricketers around her at the time. When the cricket team did the beep test, she remembered some players dropping out at level five, which she compared to a quick walk. Taylor said she could reach levels 11 or 12.
That fitness base mattered for a pace bowler. Taylor went on to have the longer part of her international career in cricket, where she took more than 100 wickets for England. The source text does not give a full list of her cricket achievements, but it makes clear that cricket became the sport in which she built her main international record.
She is also one of the rare athletes to have represented England at World Cups in both football and cricket. The Hindu interview returned to her football World Cup experience in 1995 and to how women’s sport has changed since the days when she had to rely on private insurance simply to play with boys.
A memory of changing crowds
The interview’s headline also points to one of Taylor’s striking memories from cricket: Lord’s being only a third full and yet feeling intimidating because players were not used to crowds of that size. The comment captures how different the environment was for women cricketers in her playing days.
Taylor’s career, as presented in the interview, is not just a record of two sports. It is also a reminder of the practical obstacles female athletes faced, from access to teams to basic permission to compete. Her path from Huddersfield football games to England cricket, and now to a role with the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit, came through persistence across both games.
Source: The Hindu Cricket.
