cricketground

Ladies v Gentleman Cricket Match on the Showground (now Cooroy Sporting Complex). Source: cooroy.online/cooroy-history/cooroy-social-history/

The founding mother of women's cricket in Australia was the young Tasmanian, Lily Poulett-Harris, who captained the Oyster Cove team in the league she created in 1894. Lily's obituary, from her death a few years later in 1897, states that her team was almost certainly the first to be formed in the colonies. During the 1890s, cricket and rowing were two of the most popular competitive sports for women in Australia.[1] Another of the first all-women's sports clubs founded in Australia was the Rockhampton Ladies' Club. They were fielding a women's cricket team in the mid-1890s. The team wore dresses with long skirts and long sleeves, sashes attached to their uniform, tight belts and straw boater hats.[2] Source: wikidocumentaries-demo.wmflabs.org/Q8031138?language=en

How women created cricket history and influenced today's game "It's interesting how many firsts are associated in cricket with the women's game," Mr. Wells told 702 ABC Sydney's, Dominic Knight. "One of them is that women invented round-arm bowling and they did this out of sheer necessity because of their crinoline skirts. "They couldn't bowl underarm in the early 1800s like the rest of the men were because they simply couldn't negotiate the width of their skirts." According to Mr. Wells, a woman by the name of Christina Wiles, of Kent, in 1807 bowled round-arm deliveries to her brother, starting a specific style that would overtake the underarm bowling style which dominated. "They discovered that, in doing that, they could get a bit more purchase on the ball, and they could make the ball move off the wicket, and so the men copied them." Mr. Wells said while cricket had often been viewed as a male-dominated sport, it was the men who had followed in the footsteps of female pioneers on the pitch. "Cricket was seen as a game of Empire and it was seen as something that had been sanctioned by the aristocracy in England, so the fact that women played was seen quite happily alongside the male game," he said. "Their mode of dress though didn't really allow them to excel themselves and, in fact, in many ways that stayed the case right through until the 1970s." While the dress code at the time hampered the sporting range and mobility for women, Mr. Wells said advances in the sport had allowed for a more equal playing field today. "These days the women wear pretty much what the men wear and they're equally athletic and equally proficient at the game because of it." Source: www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-08/140-years-of-women-playing...

The incredible tale behind Don Bradman's most uncomfortable dismissal: World's greatest batsman drops to the pitch after a ball from 'the fastest bowler he ever faced' - but racism means you've probably NEVER heard of him. * Harold Edward Gilbert was born on an Aboriginal reserve in Queensland in 1905 * He grew up in another Aboriginal settlement where he learned how to play cricket * Gilbert was picked as a bowler for the Queensland Sheffield Shield team in 1930 * He dismissed Donald Bradman, the world's greatest batsman, for a duck in 1931 * Bradman described the right-armer Gilbert as the fastest bowler he ever faced * Gilbert, who never played for Australia, died at 71 in a mental institution in 1978. Eddie Gilbert was the fastest bowler Don Bradman ever faced - an Aboriginal cricketer Australia rejected for national selection and then completely forgot. Gilbert, who once sat Bradman on his backside and knocked the bat out of his hand, was only the third man to dismiss The Don for a duck in first-class cricket. The little Queenslander was suggested as a counter to England's ferocious Bodyline bowling attack in 1932-33 but he never played a Test. Bradman said Gilbert was faster than Harold Larwood, who terrorized Australia during that series with short-pitched bowling aimed at the leg stump. Others have said Gilbert was even quicker than Australian tearaway Jeff Thomson and West Indian great Andy Roberts in the 1970s. Taken from his parents while still an infant, Gilbert found fame as a first-class cricketer at a time some of his teammates would not even speak to him. Source: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6591805/How-Aboriginal-b...