I gave a kind of ‘ooof!’ noise, dropped my bat, and stood rubbing the stricken part of my anatomy. XXNX The mood in our changing room was the opposite of theirs, but was not too downcast for long – you can’t win every match, and we had always known that this would be a tough one. When Carla’s next spell resulted in two more hits on my breasts (and it would have been four without some good defensive parrying on my part), I began to realise that this ‘bodyline’ bowling was a deliberate tactic on her part. Even though women players wear chest protectors for exactly this reason, it was both unexpected and quite sharply painful. So it came to our innings, with a tough score to chase.
