The Spin | I became a detective in women’s cricket and found treasure in an old Lancashire cowshed

The MCC Library has gone from three books to a proper archive with scrapbooks, letters, diaries and newspaper cuttings

In the spring of 2011, I went to the MCC library at Lord’s – the world’s largest collection of printed material on cricket. I was near the start of a PhD on the history of women’s cricket and I wanted source material: this, surely, would be where I would find it?

Nope. When the MCC’s Neil Robinson took me to the section of the shelves on women’s cricket, I found that it consisted of three books, one of which was the autobiography of Rachael Heyhoe Flint, published in 1978. As for the MCC archives? The store cupboard was bare.