Sharmila Meadows explores how Sarah Taylor’s groundbreaking appointment to England Men’s Cricket speaks far beyond sport, offering encouragement to women stepping into challenging and unfamiliar spaces. Drawing on the stories of biblical women including Esther, Ruth, Deborah and Mary Magdalene, she examines what faith, courage and obedience can look like in a man’s world.
Last week, England Cricket announced its men’s squad for this summer’s Test series against New Zealand. Few cricket moments elicit as much excitement or lively debate as Test selection – more so this year after a decimating Ashes series and disintegrating reputation. Lurking in these announcements was that of Sarah Taylor as fielding coach – the first female coach appointed to an England men’s team.
Taylor now enters a man’s world as a trailblazer but in turbulent times. England Men’s Cricket is under considerable scrutiny. Criticism hovers over its management, coaching and overall approach, with questions posed around selection, strategy and attitude. This is a time when choices will be measured to higher bars and the watching microscopes magnified.
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Taylor, 36, comes to this cauldron with credentials. She played 226 times for England from 2006 to 2019, formed part of England’s 2017 World Cup winning team where she opened the batting, and is widely regarded as one of the best ever wicketkeepers. She has coached men’s cricket at Sussex, Manchester Originals and England Lions, but now becomes the first woman in any major sport to serve as coach for an England men’s team. Whether or not you follow cricket, that makes her appointment significant for women in any field of life.
While few of us will find ourselves in elite sport or the public eye, Taylor’s promotion nonetheless speaks to the private decisions and watersheds that mark our own lives.
While few of us will find ourselves in elite sport or the public eye, Taylor’s promotion nonetheless speaks to the private decisions and watersheds that mark our own lives. As Christian women, we experience moments when God calls us into unchartered waters - To a new or more demanding job. To return from maternity leave where what was once routine seems alien and all that has become routine undermines our confidence to resume. Or to be still and wait, to trust through mounting uncertainty.
These are times of stress and rumination. Times when God invades our carefully constructed world and invites us to respond. Often to the unforeseen, to the surprise that lands in our laps, the hinges upon which life’s defining moments swing.
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Taylor has spoken of loving being a trailblazer but not the attendant spotlight.
Taylor has spoken of loving being a trailblazer but not the attendant spotlight. How do we respond when God draws us out of the shadows? Scripture serves us role models who forged into men’s worlds in turbulent times: Christian women who stepped into public and treacherous assignments, and whose stories paint signposts for the changes and challenges we confront.
There’s Esther. The Jewess married to a foreign king when he is advised to exterminate her people. She is called to be the voice for the Jewish nation in court, and against royal protocol, approach the king before she is summoned and risk death. Her strategy? To be cloaked in prayer. Esther rallies her people to fast and pray, a practice that Jesus would advocate, and succeeds.
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Or Ruth. Her eponymous Old Testament book recounts a widow who shunned the safe path home in place of the bold road into an unknown land with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Naomi’s people and God. Through choosing the God of Israel, and her obedience to Naomi’s instructions, her future was secured by meeting and marrying Boaz - and becoming an ancestor of Jesus.
Deborah is the prophetess and lone female judge of Israel, who summons Barak to defeat their captor King Jabin’s army, and when Barak refuses to advance without her, joins the battle herself, which ultimately yields Sisera, commander of enemy forces. Deborah conscripts us to courage. Courage for the venture, to stand with Christ or by a choice we know to be right when others instruct us otherwise. In Mary Magdalene, we find a woman with a shady past who defies convention and religious authorities to follow the unknown Jewish Rabbi who set her free and who she believes to be the Messiah. Mary reassures us that none of us are irredeemable or precluded from a powerful future if we choose Christ, where through the doubts and dangers of life, we find our hope.
That hope, woven through the stories of these biblical heroines, lends us a roadmap of prayer, obedience, courage, and of choosing God and closeness to Jesus as our guide, reassurance and hiding place through the turning points of life. Even in a man’s world.
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