The girls are running away with the ball
THE teenage batsman thwacked the ball towards square leg and started running, convinced he had plenty of time for a quick single. Fourteen-year-old Malvernian Bethan Manning had other ideas. Swooping like a swallow, she snatched up the ball at full speed and rocketed it into the stumps in one fluid movement. Bull’s eye. The bails flew and the astounded batsman, yards out of his ground, trudged back to the pavilion. ‘Holy cow! Did you see that?’ demanded her cricket master. ‘That’s one of best runouts I’ve ever seen in school cricket—boy or girl.’
Bethan, a Gloucestershire junior county cricketer and member of the school’s under-14 team, was the only girl on the pitch, but her teammates celebrated her prowess rather than her gender as
