English Chess Forum

Yesterday The Worcestershire team playing Notts in the u120 County Championship included 4 female players out of 12. The Notts team had 3 female players. Is this a record? Both teams were also captained by female players.

No, it's not a record.

About twenty years ago a match between Middlesex 3 and Essex 3 (if I recall correctly) was being held on International Women's Day. The Middlesex captain was the late Bruce Birchall. He marked the occasion by fielding a team consisting entirely of female players.

That suggests that there were more women players 20 years ago. I wonder how many counties would be able to raise a whole team of women these days in any division?

I don't think so. It was something of a gimmick and received a fair amount of criticsm. The eligibility of many of the women to play for Middlesex was pretty dubious and the majority were not very strong players. The Essex side won by a big margin and didn't pursue the eligibility question.

With normal team selection on merit, I don't think we could have envisaged 7 female players out of 24 in a match at that time.