New Zealand’s first all-female cricket match was played in the Wairarapa in 1867, and the sport’s popularity among women steadily grew.
With the combination of increased female physical education in schools and a growing female workforce, many girls and women participated in social, workplace, school and charity fundraising cricket games throughout the next 50 years.
By the 1930s, competitive women’s cricket boomed in popularity.
During that decade, women’s cricket went from strength to strength locally, nationally and internationally.
The era saw the establishment of the Otago Ladies Cricket Association in 1932 and the national body, the New Zealand Women’s Cricket Association, just two years later, in time for the 1934-35 English Women’s Cricket Tour of New Zealand.
By the close of the 1935 season, 20 women’s teams played in the Otago Ladies Cricket Association competition, more than doubling the sides fielded just two years before.
These teams represented prominent Dunedin businesses, religious organisations, clubs, and old girls school groups, for many of which the Hocken holds the archives.
A couple of these include the archival holdings of Hallensteins Ltd and Albion Cricket Club, which give us small yet valuable glimpses into women cricketers’ lives.
Hallensteins and its subsidiaries fielded female players representing the company. They manufactured and sold team blazers and trousers, worn by many Dunedin women cricketers from the 1933-34 season and for many years to follow, as seen in fabric swatches and advertisements.
The records for Albion Cricket Club, established in 1862, include an array of archival materials, minute books and photographs. As recorded in the club AGM minutes from October 1933, the decision was made to affiliate with the Arthur Barnett department store’s Women’s Cricket Team. They officially merged less than a year later, becoming the Albion Women’s Cricket Club, ‘‘its members though not numerous displayed commendable keenness’’.
The women’s division of the club strengthened and grew in numbers over the next 20 years, going on to win the O.W.C.A Woolworths Shield for the 1951-52 season as the fantastic club photograph shows.
Two of the women pictured from Albion’s winning team, sisters D. and L. Meek, both bowled their way into the Otago side. By the late ’50s , D. Meek’s representative career had spanned a decade, playing for Otago and the South Island, including games against the English Women’s Cricket Team during their tour of 1957-58.
The souvenir booklet, which the Hocken holds in our collections, includes a gorgeous advertisement for cricket blazers placed by Glassons, Hallensteins’ sister company to this day.
Although the match against England in 1958 was drawn due to rain, nothing has dampened the spirits of New Zealand’s trailblazing women cricketers for the past 150 years.
Let’s just hope the weather holds for the upcoming I.C.C Women’s World Cup matches!
- Ceri Austin-Hart is a curator at Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hakena, University of Otago.
