In 1998, the final year of Norma Izard’s five-year stint at the helm of the English Women’s Cricket Association (WCA), she made a decision that would change the course of sporting history. “The Australians kept on saying ‘why don’t we have a trophy when we play England?’ But they never did anything about it,” she would say in a 2017 interview. “So I thought, well, I’ll do it then. I was president, so nobody could stop me!”
Inspired by the men’s Ashes urn, she asked a friend, the woodcarver Brian Hodges, to sculpt a hollow wooden cricket ball. Then, on 20 July, she gathered together the England and Australian women’s cricket teams at Lord’s, had them sign a miniature bat, borrowed a wok from the kitchens of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), burned the bat in it, and placed the “ashes” in the wooden ball.
It was a distinctly unglamorous occasion; nonetheless, the concept of the “Women’s Ashes” so vividly captured the public imagination that 25 years later, in the summer of 2023, record crowds would flock to watch the two teams compete to win Norma’s little wooden ball.
For Norma, who has died aged 90, this would be her final act as WCA president: four months earlier, she had presided over the extraordinary general meeting at which WCA members voted to merge with the England and Wales Cricket Board. That meant the end of Norma’s 50-year relationship with the Association, which had begun in 1948 when she attended a schoolgirls’ coaching session in Kent (the first ever held in the county), involved a period as a national selector, and culminated in her appointment, in 1984, as England manager.
Women’s cricket was still entirely amateur in the 1980s and the role was unremunerated, but Norma (nicknamed “Storming Norma” by the England players) slowly introduced a more professional outlook, enforcing a strict 10pm curfew and a one-beer-a-day drinking limit on tours. In 1988, she persuaded the WCA to appoint Ruth Prideaux as the first permanent England coach.
It was a masterstroke: Ruth’s radical ideas about sports psychology and fitness, coupled with Norma’s quiet efficiency behind the scenes, saw England overcome their underdog status to triumph in the 1993 World Cup final at Lord’s. The tournament was a fitting swansong for Norma, who remains the longest-serving manager of any England cricket team, men’s or women’s.
Born in Beckenham, Norma was the only child of Olive (nee Goss) and William Preston. William was a Metropolitan police officer and a keen sportsman who played football and cricket for Cornwall and the police, and nurtured a love of cricket in his daughter from a young age. “By the time I was three I had my own bat,” Norma remembered. “And I would put some newspaper around my legs for pads, and play in the garden.”
Initially evacuated to Cornwall during the second world war, Norma was delighted when she joined Beckenham grammar school for girls in 1944 and discovered they were one of only a handful of girls’ schools in the country who offered cricket. When Norma was selected for Kent Juniors in 1948 with clothes rationing still in force, her mother, a tailor, somehow procured a yard of cream flannel to ensure her daughter had the white cricket skirt that was a WCA requirement for all representative cricket.
By the age of 17, Norma was playing for the senior Kent side and had also joined Kent Nomads WCC. She was invited to England trials ahead of the 1957-58 tour to Australia and New Zealand, but Prideaux pipped her at the post to the wicketkeeping role.
Norma trained as a PE teacher at Dartford College between 1951 and 1954, captaining the cricket team and playing in the first team for hockey and lacrosse. Her first teaching job was at Kidbrooke school for girls in Greenwich, the first purpose-built comprehensive school in London. In 1955 she married Peter Izard, an airline executive and reserve RAF officer, whom she had met while playing in a mixed hockey match.
She took a break from teaching and cricket in 1960 to raise their two sons, Barrie and Mark, but later captained Kent’s second XI, playing her final match in 1983 at the age of 50. In 1981, she became manager of the first female Junior England side.
She was appointed OBE in 1995 for services to women’s cricket, and in March 1999, after MCC finally voted to admit women, she was one of the first 10 women admitted to the club as an honorary life member. Peter had long been an MCC member; she claimed he never told her whether or not he had had voted in favour of her admission.
In later years, Norma retained a keen interest in women’s cricket, becoming a trustee for the Chance to Shine charity. She visited Australia on many occasions, including in 2008 to present Charlotte Edwards with the Women’s Ashes trophy. She was present at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in March 2020 when the world record crowd for a women’s cricket match – 86,174 spectators – was achieved.
Peter died in 2011. Norma is survived by Barrie and Mark, and two granddaughters, Caitlin and Rhiannon.
• Norma Jean Izard, cricketer and cricket administrator, born 9 September 1933; died 30 December 2023
