Interest in women’s cricket is expanding rapidly across the country. Attendance and viewing figures for this year’s Women’s T20 World Cup in England reached an all-time high, while the recent Test at Lord’s set an attendance record for a women’s Test match. This month, the Hundred match between London Spirit and Southern Brave set a new record for a women’s group game. Yet visual culture often struggles to keep pace. Historic archives remain sparse, although growing interest is creating a richer contemporary record – one to which this project, Wicket, contributes.
Wicket is rooted in relationships and place. The project puts women and girls at the centre of the narrative, creating images that foreground not only participation but belonging, camaraderie and community. Bradford Park Avenue Ladies is a visibly diverse, intergenerational team shaped by a range of lived experiences – a reflection of Bradford’s social fabric, though still largely absent from mainstream images of cricket.
The portraits below are just part of the project and were shot on analogue medium format film using Kodak Portra stock. In interviews with the players, another narrative surfaced repeatedly. Cricket was rarely discussed only as a sport. It was described as confidence, friendship, identity and purpose. The project asks audiences to look again at cricket, not as spectacle but as community, memory and identity. It becomes a space where women and girls are moving from the margins.