Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

40 ‘The cohorts of cricket are being swollen’ Australian women’s cricket had roughly developed along the same lines as in England. The sport first emerged from fee-paying schools and universities in the 1890s, but was organised earlier than in England with the formation of the Victoria Ladies’ Cricket Association in 1905. During the First World War, Australian nurses and volunteers also enjoyed the sport, some of them for the first time. The game was played between nurses and convalescing soldiers at military hospitals in England, France and Egypt as a form of rehabilitation and relaxation. 15 The Victoria Association exchanged ‘Ladies’ for ‘Women’ in 1923 after an influx of workplace and working-class teams, and as other states quickly formed organising bodies too, the Australia Women’s Cricket Association was established in 1931, just a few years before the WCA toured the country. By the 1930s the Australian Association contained teams from all social backgrounds and some of their best players were working-class girls, such as star of the 1937 tour Peggy Antonio, who worked in a shoe factory making boxes. By 1938 they had started their own monthly magazine, Australian Women’s Cricket , and 4,000 women were estimated to be playing in the country – a peak not reached again until the 1970s. 16 Although the game was also played in elite girls’ schools in New Zealand from the 1890s, development was slower here and did not gain a significant following until it was adopted in state schools and teacher training colleges in the 1920s and 1930s. Auckland was the first to establish an organising body in 1928, which eventually led to the formation of the New Zealand Women’s Cricket Council in 1934. 17 Innishannon Ladies’ Cricket Club, County Cork, c. 1888. One of the earliest women’s teams in Ireland, they appear to have played for a few years before disbanding. (National Hockey Museum)