Jan Godman took over from Nicky Tranter (Boss) as Honorary Secretary of Somerset Wanderers Ladies Cricket Club (SWLLCC) in 1998. She was handed a 30 year legacy, which seemed to be a very daunting prospect as SWLCC, was a team renowned nationally.
As with most Women’s cricket teams then, the team ran on a shoe string, fundraising and applying for grants where possible. They played at various grounds including a few in Wiltshire. They were then given use of the Corsham Barracks pitch as a more permanent pitch to play their home games on.
By 2000, they were approached by Bath Cricket Club to say they intended setting up a Women’s side. Now a lot of SWLCC juniors were from schools in Bath and the surrounding areas, so If Bath started a side, their source of young players would start to dry up. They had good links with the management committee at Bath and after 18 months of Jan, going between the SWLCC committee(Founder members) and Bath she successfully negotiated a merger. It took a couple of seasons, but they played their first full season in 2002, under the Bath umbrella.
At this time they played in the National Premier League South, which saw them travelling up to London to play in the away games. The furthest match was Kent Invicta, which could be up to 3 hours travel. This was what happened then. Most of Bath were playing for Somerset Women too and if you wanted to play the best standard, you had to travel. It must be noted that this is when all the England players still played club cricket just to get match play, as Internationals were still widely spaced in the season.
As the Women’s game started to develop and more and more clubs set up. Bath started a 2nd Xl to enter in a South West League. This was done under the auspices of Ian Shrubsole. As many know he was a formidable Bath player whose 3 children were brought up through the Bath age group teams. Shrub as Director of Cricket, pushed for the Women and Girls section to increase participation. Both his Daughters came through the club pathway and up into the Somerset County structure and beyond.
They can boast of having more than 10 England International players come through Bath and at least 3 Overseas Internationals. Hannah Lloyd, Kathryn Wilkins and Jackie Hawker have all been Bath Wanderers Captains and who have donned an England Cap. The later being one of our long serving Captains for 10 years. The most recent England players being Anya Shrubsole and Fran Wilson, both of whom played up through the Bath age group teams to become fully professional cricketers.
In 2015 for the 2nd time in the team’s 50+ year history Bath Wanderers became National Champions. This saw the last time that the International players would don the club colours, as by 2016 the KIA Super League had been founded, and unfortunately saw the 1st Xl taken from Bath in one go. As is the way with the fast development of Women’s sport, Bath regrouped and after just coaching the younger girls, Jan was back coaching the Women’s side, and reaping the hard work of Shrub’s development of the junior girls teams, and they were soon back with 2 Women’s Xl’s.
2023 brings once again new challenges with the dispanding of the South West Women’s Regional Premier League and Bath (captained by Jan’s daughter Emma), embarking on the inaugural season of the newly formed Women’s West of England Premier League(WEPL).
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