Express & Star

First Rachael Heyhoe Flint Award winner chosen

An award set up in memory of pioneering cricket star Rachael Heyhoe Flint has been handed out for the first time.

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Malvern College’s inaugural Rachael Heyhoe Flint Cricket Award has been won by teenager Grace Seedhouse.

She was selected from dozens of talented young cricketers who attended highly competitive trials. She will join Malvern College in September 2019.

The award is worth several thousand pounds a year plus a package of mentoring and specialist coaching on the college’s Performance Pathway which is designed to help each recipient reach the highest level and is the first dedicated girls’ cricket scholarship offered by any school.

The 13-year-old, who lives in Worfield, is already an outstanding all-round sportswoman who plays club cricket at Worfield and alongside the boys in Birchfield’s 1st XI.

She also participates in the Shropshire County Cricket pathway which identifies talent in the sport.

She is bright and focussed, demonstrating skill with both bat and ball and has benefited enormously from all the cricket coaching opportunities offered to her. Grace is also a gifted all-rounder who shines in a range of sports including cricket, netball, hockey and cross- country.

“I am really thrilled to be coming to Malvern as the first holder of the girls’ cricket award,” said 13-year-old Grace, who lives in Worfield.

“It’s a great honour and the girls’ cricket at Malvern is so strong, it’ll give me the chance to try to fulfil my dream of playing cricket for England. Rachael Heyhoe Flint set the standard as one of the greatest women cricketers of all time and I really hope I can live up to her example.”

Malvern College’s head of girls’ cricket Thea Brookes, herself a former squad member of the England Women’s Senior Academy and Loughborough Lightning, and currently playing for Yorkshire Diamonds in the Kia Super League, was part of the selection panel that chose Grace to receive the inaugural award.

Young cricket star Grace Seedhouse, 13 from Worfield near Bridgnorth

“It was a pretty tough job, selecting who should become our first Rachael Heyhoe Flint Award winner,” she explained.

“Wwe had a number of very talented girls who applied. Grace really stood out, though, as she’s a naturally gifted and versatile sportswoman. She has beautiful timing and is calm under pressure.

“She also has a fierce desire to learn and improve, which often makes the difference between a good player and a great one.”

The Rachael Heyhoe Flint Award will be made annually so, by 2023, there will be one cricket award winner in each year at Malvern, where girls’ cricket is expanding rapidly.

This summer Malvern’s Girls’ XI played their first fixture on the Senior, the 1st XI pitch renowned as one of Britain’s most beautiful grounds. In that match against Wellington, Malvern’s Jessica Martyn-Smith made history by becoming the first girl ever to take a wicket on the Senior.

Baroness Heyhoe Flint – who dies in 2017 – captained the successful England women’s side from 1966 to 1978 and was the first female cricketer to hit a six in a Test match.

In 1999, after years of campaigning for equal opportunities for women cricketers, she became one of the first 10 women admitted to the MCC and later a committee member.

She had close links with the college – her son Ben Flint, himself a former Staffordshire junior county cricketer, went to Malvern in 1987, having previously attended Birchfield School, and she was a member of the College Council for 10 years.

She was also a director and then a vice-president at Wolves.