Family unearths story of Australian cricket’s ‘girl Bradman’ Hazel Pritchard

In a 1937 newsreel of the women’s cricket Test at Northampton, the announcer couldn’t resist a jab: “What astonished everybody and annoyed all the men was the skill the ladies showed at this difficult game.”

England had won the first tour, held in Australia in 1933. But the 1937 Test — only the second ever women’s test series — forced many to see women’s cricket with new eyes.

Until then, the women’s game had struggled for acceptance in Australia. Cricket was considered masculine terrain, and those who stepped onto the field faced scrutiny and at times ridicule. Critics warned that sport might distract women from their main task of procreating while there were endless debates about suitably modest uniforms. One local councillor dismissed the women’s game as a “burlesque and a leg show”.

‘Girl Bradman’

Against this backdrop, one Australian player stood out. Twenty-four-year-old batter Hazel Pritchard became the focus of the press throughout the tour. British newspapers dubbed her the “girl Bradman”.

Looking at 1937 newsreels, it’s not hard to see why. She was a natural cricketer, attractive, likeable and engaged to be married. Yet her story, like those of many women who helped build the sport, slipped quietly from view. When she died in 1967 at just 54, she did not receive an obituary.

Fragments of the early games are scattered in museums, collections and attics around the country, mostly managed by volunteers. In 1990, sports historian Dr Marion Stell and researcher Mary-Lou Johnson interviewed nine women associated with Australia’s early Tests. Hazel Pritchard was not among them.

There was no central catalogue for these scattered histories and no one home either physical or digital. That may be about to change.

A musty old trunk

A coalition of researchers — the Women’s Cricket History Network — has formed, ranging from former internationals to grassroots players. One of them, former international player Karen Price, née Hill, now the NSW chief research officer for the network puts it plainly: “Our network’s mission is to record and document the history of women’s cricket, gather memorabilia so that it doesn’t get lost to the garbage bin and to tell the stories of these pioneers so they are not lost forever.”

Some of the most precious material has been sitting quietly in a family home in Orange. 

In a corner of his grandparents’ former home, Ben Keegan prises open the lid of an old travelling trunk which belonged to his grandparents; rugby international Alan Ridley and his wife — netballer and cricketer — Edna Pritchard. Edna is the elder sister of “girl Bradman” Hazel. 

The trunk, marked with flaking green and gold paint, hasn’t been opened in years and we have a quick whiff of something musty and comforting.

Inside it’s a historian’s Santa sack: an embarrassment of scrapbooks, medals, letters and photographs spanning the 1920s and 1930s, the Depression years. 

Edna and Hazel played for a St George team called the Cheerios. Hazel later told a newspaper: “[I] was interested in tennis and didn’t give a thought to cricket. Elder sister Edna was the cricketer. One day her team was short and [I] was asked to fill the team.” Hazel Pritchard debuted for NSW in 1929 aged 18 and played on the side for a decade.

Inside the trunk was a battered envelope containing 20 letters Hazel wrote to her family during the 1937 tour, her first overseas travel. They cover the five-week sea voyage to England and the full Test series.

‘Fighting for acceptance’

Touring was a costly undertaking. Players funded their own travel and equipment. The Australian women sailed tourist class on the S.S. Jervis Bay, stopping in Colombo, Aden, Port Said and Malta before docking at Southampton. 

Hazel embraced every chance to explore: in Colombo she rode a 30-year-old performing elephant named Raho; in Port Said she took a side-trip to Cairo to cross the desert by camel and marvel at the pyramids and the Sphinx. While the other women held back, Hazel learned to bargain with stallholders and reported her frugality with pride.

Editorial cartoonists mocked the list of shipboard rules which dictated where the women could go, what they should wear to dinner, early bedtimes, no drinking, smoking or gambling, and compulsory “physical drill”. However Hazel’s letter’s show that being a subject of a newspaper cartoon, in its own backhanded way, was an honour.

The 1937 team even had a journalist travelling with them. Sportswriter Pat Jarrett of the Melbourne Herald persuaded proprietor Keith Murdoch to let her cover the series, reporting throughout the tour. All the major newspapers carried reports of the Australian women, as did the Women’s Weekly.

In England, the Australians were treated with a mix of novelty and admiration. They attended George VI’s coronation, were billeted with aristocratic families, took tea at 10 Downing Street with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Mrs Baldwin — herself a cricketer for the White Heather Club — and had bats crafted at the Gunn & Moore factory in Nottingham.

But they were not permitted to play at Lord’s. That milestone would not come until 1976. 

Karen Hill, who was part of the first Australian team to play at the famous ground, recalls: “We played the first-ever women’s game at Lord’s. A photographer wheedled his way into the change rooms and took a shot of us half-dressed. That was the picture on the front page of the papers the next day. So, like our predecessors, we’ve been fighting for acceptance all this time.”

Hazel’s letters capture the rivalry with “the Poms” in full colour. The English nicknamed her “Schnitzel” and she noted dryly: “Am sure we took some of the conceit out of them, for although they are really very nice, they have got an annoying superior look about them.” 

Crowd numbers swelled throughout the series, and she was touched by the many ovations she received from them.

Australia and England drew the second Test, improving on Australia’s showing in the inaugural 1934 series. 

Hazel produced some tremendous batting on the tour. Despite this, she was hard on herself. After the final match at The Oval, she wrote: “The third test is over and with it a lot of worry and concentration. I go to bed at nights and toss and turn, score centuries and ducks in the one innings, drop catches and take spectacular ones. Oh, it’s been a strain, believe me. I’m awfully sorry to disappoint you all by not scoring a century in one of the tests. But had you seen me batting, I think you would have been satisfied.”

‘An unknown person’

Seven months after returning home, Hazel married Queensland businessman Les Scanlan and they made their home in Mount Isa, where Les worked in horse-racing and hotels. According to their son, Terry Scanlan, Les travelled constantly, leaving Hazel to manage the hotel. “She slept with a gun under the bed,” he said, underscoring the dramatic shift in her life. 

“When she went to Mount Isa, her cricketing career came to a crashing end. She didn’t join any cricket team out there and she was an unknown person,” Terry said. 

Hazel briefly returned to the game in 1938 for both her local team and the state side, but retired from NSW in 1939. “I think she would have like to continue playing,” he said. “I think she would have regretted not playing.”

Hazel Pritchard’s letters — stored for decades in a family trunk — are another piece in the jigsaw, helping researchers rebuild the early story of women’s cricket. They reveal a gifted, determined young woman who experienced the character-building skills of cricket.

In one of her last dispatches, journalist Pat Jarrett reflected that a nation’s character is seen through its players, and the Australians had drawn England steadily to their side — from 2,000 spectators at the first match to 15,000 at the final. 

“All these women ask is that they be taken seriously and not judged by male standards,” she wrote all those years ago.

Jane Hutcheon is a former ABC journalist, now a freelance writer and family history researcher.