The Maiden Summer - a podcast series about the Australian pioneers of women's Test cricket.
The passing of time has erased most of their names but now, on the eve of an Ashes summer, it’s time to remember and celebrate the Australian women who took on England Down Under in the first women’s Test series. It was 1934-35, in the aftermath of the bitter Bodyline series, and Australian cricket fans turned out in their thousands to watch the three-match series. The six-part series goes back to the start of women’s cricket in Australia, and climaxes with those First Test matches and the Australian tour of England just three years later. We hear from some of those players, and those women who followed them, all of them intent to build something lasting from the foundations of that long-ago summer.
https://share.transistor.fm/s/7aef1b26
Tip of the hat to the skills, patience and knowledge of producer Chris Plumridge.
And my thanks to those who have been so happy to help with the project: Ruth Buckstein, Sylvia Faram, Jennifer Flaherty, Anne Gordon, Nikki Henningham, Margaret Holland, Rina Hore, Catherine McLeod, Ann Mitchell, Esme Mueller, Raf Nicholson, Ray Sneddon, Jacquie Triffitt, Louise Zedda-Sampson.
A big shout-out to the voices who brought some of the players to life: Mitch Cleary, Rose Flynn, Elizabeth Grainger, Hilary Lamacraft, Jane Longhurst, Hazel Pigrum and Sue Westwood.
And thanks to David Studham and Trevor Ruddell, at the MCC Library, the keepers of the archive. (Trevor has a particularly strong connection to women’s cricket.)
Resources (will be updated as we go)
Audio:
Footage supplied by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia’s Film Australia Collection.
(With special thanks to the NFSA for its support and guidance on this project.)
Archive interviews from: the Oral History Collection, the National Library of Australia
and Oral history holdings, the National Museum of Australia.
Thanks to Cinesound Movietone Productions
Books:
Jacquie Triffitt On The Front Foot – The Rise of Tasmanian Women’s Cricket (Forty South Publishing, Hobart, 2021).
Louise Zedda-Sampson Bowl The Maidens Over – Our First Women Cricketers (lszpress, 2021)
https://louisezeddasampson.com.au/shop/bowl-the-maidens-over/
Rafaelle Nicholson, Ladies and Lords: a History of Women’s Cricket in Britain (Peter Lang, Oxford, 2019)
Richard Cashman and Amanda Weaver, Wicket Women – Cricket & Women in Australia (UNSW Press, Kensington, 1991)
OTHER SOURCES:
Fiona Bollen with Matt Bonser, Clearing Boundaries - the rise of Australian’s women’s cricket (Churchill Press/Bradman Museum, Subiaco, 2020)
Roy Case, The Pebble in My Shoe - An Anthology of Women’s Cricket (AuthorHouse UK, 2018)
Greg Growden, Cricketers At War (ABC Books, Sydney, 2019)
Gideon Haigh, Game for Anything - Writings on Cricket, (Black Inc, Melbourne, 2004)
Gideon Haigh and David Frith, Inside Story - Unlocking Australian Cricket Archives (News Custom Publishing, Southbank, 2007)
Rob Harvey, Captains File - From Peden to Haynes: Australia’s Women Test Cricket Captains (Kovac Publishing, Naracoorte, 2018)
Marjorie Pollard, Cricket for Women and Girls, (Hutchinson & Co, London, 1934)
Audrey Tate, Fair Comment - The life of Pat Jarrett 1911-1990 (Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1996)
Websites:
Trove
https://sirensport.com.au/
https://daniellewarby.com/women-in-sport-podcasts-from-australia/
