New Zealand set to host women’s Cricket World Cup 49 years after the first one – RNZ

Cricket lovers know the scenes well.

New Zealand play Surrey during the 1973 tour. Bev Brentnall is the wicketkeeper. Photo: Supplied / Ina Lamason Collection, NZ Cricket Museum

On a golden English summer evening in 1975, the West Indies men's team beat the mighty Australians to win the first World Cup in London.

Except it wasn't.

Two years earlier seven women's teams headed to England play cricket's actual first World Cup.

It was the idea of England women's captain Rachael Heyhoe-Flint and financed by businessman Jack Hayward.

The year before New Zealand toured Australia and South Africa, winning test series in each country.

Now, a similar team was to head overseas again, for a month of cricket and plenty of travel.

The 14 women were skilled athletes, but cricket wasn't their profession. They had jobs, or families to care for.

Over summer they played club matches and a 10-day provincial tournament, but in the months leading to the World Cup much of the preparation was solitary in the winter gloom.

Captain and wicketkeeper Bev Brentnall, a primary school teacher from North Shore who turns 86 next month, would go running after work and practice her catching using a net at home.

Others had similar routines, and then there was the matter of raising funds. Each woman had to come up with $1000 to make the tour.

Finally, in June, they were off. Even that was not plain sailing, with flight delays and long lags en route ensuring a weary team arrived in London.

The trip was still quicker than the six weeks the team spent travelling to England by boat just seven years earlier.

The 1973 World Cup team. Maureen Peters is in the back row at right. Lynda Prichard is in the second row at left, and Judi McCarthy at right. Bev Brentnall is second from right in the front. Photo: Supplied / Etha Rouse Collection, NZ Cricket Museum

"We had to pay our own airfare and I dare say that lovely man Jack Howard paid for a lot of the accommodation," said Maureen Peters, then Maureen Dunlop.

"It's quite funny because we ended up staying in Baker Street, London, at the Sherlock Holmes Hotel, so that was quite something as well."

The accommodation varied as the team wound their way around England.

"We did stay in other places and there was three in a room, two in a double bed, one in a single. One of the rooms had a bathroom from Lord Nelson's ship," said Peters, 79.

It was a busy tour with plenty of functions, as well as six international matches and other games against local sides.

The teams had a reception with prime minister Ted Heath, and a cocktail party with the New Zealand men's team also touring England.

There, the two captains, Bev Brentnall and Bev Congdon, revelled in the rarity of the men's and women's leaders having the same first name.

"There was a big article in the paper about the two Bevs," Brentnall recalled.

But the tour was about cricket and the New Zealanders did not have long to get up to speed with the new format of one-day, 60-over matches.

The players wore whites, and played in culottes, not trousers.

Opening batter Judi McCarthy, then Judi Doull, said the side were aware the tournament was making history, but they were also working out new tactics.

"We did know we'd beaten the men to play the World Cup, because there hadn't been a men's World Cup before. There hadn't been any World Cup in cricket before that."

McCarthy, 84, thought the team selection was not right for the one-day game.

She said she was too slow at the top of the order, but in the test game she was a serious player, averaging more than 40.

Peters said she enjoyed playing on English grounds.

An opening bowler who specialised in out-swing, she finished her one-day career with a remarkably miserly economy rate of less than two runs an over.

At the 1973 World Cup she even bowled seven overs for four runs against eventual champions, England.

Not everyone was sure about the new limited-overs matches, however.

Team manager Ina Lamason said it was hit and giggle, funsy sport.

Brentnall, too, preferred the longer game, and still does.

"We actually hadn't been playing limited-over cricket here, but it was something new for us. To be honest, although I felt very honoured to be named captain, I would rather have been captaining a test series. That's proper cricket," she said.

"We had a good team. They were good cricket players, so we adapted quite quickly. We didn't just sit around and let people beat us."

The New Zealand and Trinidad and Tobago teams line up before their 1973 World Cup match. Photo: Supplied / Ina Lamason Collection, NZ Cricket Museum

Coverage of women's sport was varied, often depending on individual journalists taking an interest.

Some reverted to tropes about looks, rather than ability.

As detailed in The Warm Sun on My Face: The story of women's cricket in New Zealand, former Australian men's all-rounder Keith Miller wrote in Britain's Daily Express newspaper: "It was bras off and chestplates on when Australia's whirlwind bowler Tina Macpherson was bumping them down on the opening day of the women's World Cup...

"Gone were the days of flat chests and hairy legs. These girls had curvaceous figures and beauty... My vote for the cutest-looking cricketer goes to opening bat Donna Carmino, a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Trinidad."

Unlike the men two years later, no women's games were held at London's famous Lord's ground.

The Marylebone Cricket Club president Aidan Crawley said if women's cricket proved itself as graceful as other sport, "Lord's would be sympathetic to any appeals for a match if there was ever another women's World Cup".

"I think we just ignored it. pompous gentleman wanting to hear the sound of their own voice," said New Zealand top-order batter Lynda Prichard, then Lynda Powell.

"I don't think that any of us really had the expectation of wanting to perform at the top grounds throughout the world. We were happy to play a test at St Kilda in Melbourne rather than the MCG.

"That didn't matter for us, it was the fact that we were playing international cricket and we were playing to the best standard that we could produce."

Peters though said some were disappointed they could not play at Lord's, and by Crawley's comments.

"We all went, 'Oh wow, that's typical'. It was off putting to start with. Not the greatest."

Prichard, 71, scored 70 in New Zealand's first game against Trinidad and Tobago, as the team made a winning start.

They were scheduled to play the tournament's opening match against Jamaica, but the likely victory for New Zealand was rained off.

This came at a huge cost. The system used at the tournament allocated four points for a win and just one for a no-result.

New Zealand went on to beat England, losing to Australia and an International team. But for the rain they could have finished second, and even had a shot at winning if other results had fallen their way.

"I know that we were disappointed, but what can you do?" McCarthy said. "It was the first time and I guess it was a learning experience for everybody running it."

"Yes, we were disappointed by that, but you can't dwell on it forever, can you?" Brentnall said.

Memories of the tour, however, are happy ones, as Peters describes.

"We got good crowds. They love their cricket over there.

"Before we left we played a test match against Australia and I think there were 20 people there, and about four or five of those were my family.

"When we got over there it felt a lot different. It was lovely... We were pioneers, weren't we?"

Prichard, too, has fond recollections about a month that altered her life.

"I think the romance really started after the tour. I was more interested in playing cricket during the tour.

"I got to know my husband Roy. He was our coach driver and we just got friendly. He was with us all the time."

Lynda and Roy wrote to each other for a while, before Roy moved to New Zealand. They are about to celebrate 48 years of marriage.

It came about by luck too. The team's original bus driver was replaced when it became obvious he did not know his way around London.

A newspaper clipping describes how Lynda and Roy Prichard met. Photo: Supplied / Lynda Prichard

New Zealand has won one World Cup, at home in 2000, after twice losing finals, to England at Lord's in 1993 and to Australia in India in 1997.

Peters played for New Zealand until 1982 and for more than 20 years for Wellington, before becoming a national selector. She still loves cricket and hopes to attend World Cup matches this year.

Prichard played for New Zealand until 1975 and, during the 1982 World Cup in New Zealand, was a tournament liaison officer in Auckland. She also watches cricket and has tickets for the World Cup.

McCarthy also last played for New Zealand in 1975. She was a national selector and ran the Silver Fern Club for everyone who had played for New Zealand, until handing that over to New Zealand Cricket. She plans to attend the World Cup. More recently McCarthy has been involved in golf and lawn bowls.

Brentnall retired after the 1973 World Cup. She was president of the New Zealand women's governing body for a while, but has not been involved in cricket since its administration merged with the men's and her role abruptly finished. She has also played golf. She prefers following test cricket.

Acknowledgements: Penny Kinsella; New Zealand Cricket Museum curator Owen Mann; The Warm Sun on My Face: The story of women's cricket in New Zealand, by Trevor Auger, with Adrienne Simpson; Ng Taonga Sound and Vision.

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New Zealand set to host women's Cricket World Cup 49 years after the first one - RNZ