Pariah to pioneer: Patsy Fayne on life & legacy

It was a couple of years back now that Patsy Fayne found out she had between three and five years to live.

"They thought I had pulmonary fibrosis," Fayne tells cricket.com.au. "Unknown cause. So I started getting my affairs in order. Thought I better do something before I carked it."

For Fayne, who represented Australia 16 times from the late 1960s, that meant tying the two ends of her cricketing life together. Although she had been completely detached from the sport for 35 years in between, when it came to grappling with her own mortality, that mattered not a jot.

So Fayne went searching. Among her few treasured keepsakes, she located an old trophy box that had remained closed for almost half a century.

She opened it up, and knew exactly what she wanted to do with the item inside.

* * *

About 10 minutes from the hubbub of Hastings Street, Noosa, in a well-manicured corner block amid the northern suburbs of the Sunshine Coast, Patsy and Michael Fayne are readying themselves for lawn bowls.

For Patsy in particular, the activity is a compromise with the competitive urges that still race through her mind, even as her 76-year-old body insists she slows down.

Next week however, there will be no lawn bowls, because they have been invited to the second women's ODI between Australia and West Indies in Melbourne, where members of the Australia team from the 1973 World Cup – the first ever in the sport – are reuniting.

The event has been organised by Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers' Association as the first instalment in their 'Cricket Heritage Project', in which achievements and landmarks, both team and individual, are being celebrated at international matches across the home summer.

The idea of a reunion sends Patsy's mind spinning back through the decades, to a time and place where women cricketers were considered more pariahs than pioneers.

"In New South Wales back in the '60s and '70s, you didn't mention you were a cricketer," she says. "(People would say): 'Are you a boy or something? Do you stand up to go to the toilet, do you?' Just really nasty comments.

"So you didn't tell anyone. You just did it.

"I remember, years later, my sister actually said to me, 'I didn't know you played for Australia'. It just wasn't something you talked about."

Patsy Fayne was Patsy May back then, a teacher from Sydney in her early 20s who happened to be adept from 22 yards with a red leather ball in her right hand. Her skills had developed in the backyard thanks to the familiar tale of the influence of a dominant older brother.

"David was three years older than me, and he was bigger, and stronger, so he owned the bat," she remembers. "So I had to bowl. Same old story (laughs)."

At Lindfield East Public School in the 1950s, Patsy, who was school captain in '59, wasn't allowed to play in the cricket team because she was a girl.

"And then my parents sent me to Wenona, 'school for young ladies'," she says. "That was their way of trying to balance their 'tomboy' daughter with the expectations of accepted behaviours of a Sydney North Shore young lady. Well, they tried (laughs).

"We had a cricket game once a year, and I think when the teachers were writing the reports, some cricket was played, and then from there I went to Sydney Uni, and I saw (a group of women) bowling in the nets one day. I thought, I can do that.

"So in I went – stockings, skirt, shoes – ran up, bowled the ball, and they said: 'What are you doing on Saturday?'

"I was in their team straight away."

Patsy was 18 at the time and quickly became friends with Ann Mitchell, who had been in the nets that day, and the pair went on to debut for New South Wales together at the national championships in January 1967.

The annual competition was the only opportunity outside of Tests for women in Australia to play first-class cricket, and 19-year-old Patsy impressed with eight wickets in three matches and an ability to swing the ball while maintaining a steady line and length.

"We used to have a practice where you'd bowl at one stump," she remembers with a smile. "(NSW wicketkeeper) Jackie Potter would be in behind. I could hit that stump nine times out of 10. Never got the tenth."

Against powerhouses Victoria though, Fayne went wicketless with 0-51 from 19 overs.

"The Victorians were more serious about it, and they were head and shoulders above us," she recalls. "For me, it was a game of cricket. I used to get on with the opposition as well. A little social butterfly."

That tension continued for Patsy through much of her international career, which stretched from December 1968 through to August 1976 and included that very first women's ODI at the 1973 World Cup in England, in which she bowled first change and took 2-8.

"That was just how I approached it: you won, you lost, it was a game," she says. "The (Australian) captain was Victorian, the vice-captain was Victorian, the third selector was Victorian, the opening bowlers were Victorian, the wicketkeeper was Victorian, and the opening bats were Victorian (laughs).

"So I'd just run around the field, throw it in here and there. You can only take a wicket if you're given the ball – you just hoped it still had a bit of shine on it when you got hold of it.

"But I think I went into the Australian team too early. State cricket was more my level, I think. That's where I belonged."

* * *

Fayne was 28 when she took stock of her reality and didn't particularly like what she saw. Playing international cricket at the time was, in many ways – notably financially – a liability as opposed to an asset. That fact was rammed home to her at a 10-year high school reunion.

"All my classmates were married, had houses and mortgages, children, and I had nothing," she says. "I thought to myself: Why have I got nothing?

"It was because I'd been playing cricket. I'd been going interstate, I'd gone to England twice, and I was broke.

"I thought: This is ridiculous. It was far too early to give up. But I did."

With that she looks across the room, and nods to her partner of around 40 years.

"And then I met this one," she smiles.

Patsy and fellow schoolteacher Michael shared more in common than just their profession, and while she retained an interest in the game through sporadic coaching across the next few years, cricket soon faded completely out of her life.

The pair relocated to the New South Wales south coast, immersing themselves in whatever the quaint seaside communities of Gerroa, Kiama and Gerringong had to offer. Mostly, that involved the water.

"We were into snorkelling, diving for lobsters and abalone," she says. "Now, on a summer's day when it's 40 degrees, where would you rather be – in the water diving for lobsters, or on the cricket field?

"I had nothing to do with cricket. I was a deputy principal by that stage, so I didn't have a chance even to coach kids.

"I moved on, basically. Just had another life."

In 2007, the Faynes moved to the Sunshine Coast, where Patsy's sister was also located. Around a year earlier, Patsy had received her Baggy Green in the post. It was recognition for an accomplishment which, for her, had never been particularly worthy of such attention.

Yet in 2016, a couple of things happened that began to change how she felt about that.

* * *

Amanda Tie, who has just popped in to the Fayne residence for a morning cuppa during a break from work, is at once a link to Patsy's cricketing past and present.

Tie is the great niece of Miriam Knee, another member of the 1973 ODI 'originals' and a former national captain whose leadership Fayne very much enjoyed.

And purely by chance, she also created the circumstances that led to Fayne's return to the world of cricket.

But first, Fayne had to take a couple of steps in that direction herself.

"A good friend at Probus (Professional Business Group) said, 'I want you to be a guest speaker to a group of quilters'," she says. "I thought, you know, my teaching career, I did well, and she said, 'No, I want you to talk cricket'.

"I said, 'Who'd be interested? It was 40 years ago'.

"Anyway, she said, 'Do it for me'.

"So Michael did all the computing, the photos, and we put a presentation together."

Conscious of finding a way to keep her audience engaged, Fayne opted to focus her talk on the portrayal of sportswomen in the media during her playing days. She had newspaper clippings to support her stance, which essentially boiled down to "how disgusting it was"; rather than celebrating the first women's match ever played at Lord's (in which Fayne took the first wicket), for example, the main image was one snapped hastily in the changerooms, with various players in a state of undress.

"People would laugh, but I'd say, 'This is how it really was – it's not a laughing matter. This is what we put up with'," Fayne says. "So it almost became a humorous talk, but it really wasn't."

Interest spread about Fayne's 20-minute presentation, and across the next two years she was asked to do it 26 times at events across south-east Queensland.

"And at the same time," she recalls, "Amanda was moving and shaking with women's cricket up here."

Hailing from a family of women cricketers, Tie was surprised when she learned there was no club-based competition for women in the northern part of the Sunshine Coast.

"So we ran a series of 'come and try' days because otherwise, if you wanted to play cricket as a female, you had to join the men," she says.

Michael Fayne stumbled across the advertisement in the local newspaper, and alerted Patsy, who decided the time had come to properly return to the game she loves.

"I wanted to coach them," she says. "And as it turned out, they were a beautiful group of human beings."

Fayne fell into a mentoring role for the newly-formed teams at Tewantin-Noosa and her relationship with the playing group quickly blossomed. Her history and credentials in the game combined with her teaching and coaching background made her an ideal figure to assist the players, most of whom were new to the game.

"Some of the women had never played a sport before," says Tie, who joined the side as a 38-year-old rookie and has since graduated to captain.

"In that first year we had around 20 players, and it was just about getting women to learn the game and have some fun.

"You'd get out to the middle and the batter would be standing the wrong way, or not holding the bat the right way, and the wicketkeeper might come up and help.

"Patsy was very good at teaching the basics – how to bowl, say – and to have it coming from someone with her experience was just amazing."

In her role as sports strategy and project advisor with Noosa Council, Tie has overseen an increase in registrations in the years since, with two senior women's club competitions to be rolled out this season across the Sunshine Coast, with the best of those players vying for a spot in the Sunshine Coast Scorchers Premier Cricket set-up.

Tie believes the increased interest has come about in part because of the greater exposure of the national team and Weber WBBL, but also thanks to the culture that has quickly been developed at local level.

"That's been a real focus for us – trying to build a really good, positive culture among the teams," she says. "So those first couple of years, it was great to have Patsy around, and we actually brought all the teams from the women's competition together for a lunch. We had some fun, Patsy gave us a fantastic presentation about her touring days, some great stories about touring through the West Indies and playing at Lord's.

"From that, the competition will come, but you've got to have people participating first."

And throughout these formative years, Fayne's presence has come to be highly valued. In one match a couple of years back, she even filled in as an extra in the field, taking a catch off Tie's bowling.

"There's great endearment for Patsy," Tie adds. "Whenever she comes on the field, all the women run over and give her a big cuddle.

"She's definitely part of the cricketing landscape up here."

* * *

As it turned out, the doctors had it wrong. After taking a tablet that "tore my gut out" for two years, Fayne's health situation was re-diagnosed.

"This new professor came into town last year, I've got a beautiful doctor here," she says. "And they said, 'We're going to give you a blood test, because I don't believe you've got (pulmonary fibrosis).

"They gave me a blood test, and they reckon it's scleroderma now – I'm not dying anymore, so I can get my life back together."

Patsy is attending matches less often nowadays. She still has some breathing issues but continues to immerse herself in her lawn bowls, while she has ensured her link with women's cricket on the Sunshine Coast endures.

During that period in which she was coming to terms with the reality of her days being numbered, she located the mini autograph bat from Australia's ODI against eventual winners England in the 1973 World Cup. It had been signed by both teams, tucked away by Fayne not long after, and largely forgotten about for much of the next 50 years.

"Before the end of last season, I got that bat out and had it made into a trophy, and presented it to Tewantin-Noosa Cricket Club as the Spirit of Cricket award," Fayne says.

"The lass who won it (Sharon Withers) is also treasurer of the club, and her two children play as well."

It was a fitting first recipient of what is now a perpetual award, and the perfect way for Fayne's legacy in the game to endure.

CommBank ODIs v West Indies 2023

First ODI: Australia won by eight wickets

Second ODI: October 12, Junction Oval, 10.05am AEDT

First ODI: October 14, Junction Oval, 10.05am AEDT

Australia squad: Alyssa Healy (c), Tahlia McGrath (vc), Darcie Brown, Ashleigh Gardner, Kim Garth, Jess Jonassen, Alana King, Phoebe Litchfield, Beth Mooney, Ellyse Perry, Megan Schutt, Annabel Sutherland, Georgia Wareham

West Indies squad: Hayley Matthews (c), Shemaine Campbelle (vc), Aaliyah Alleyne, Shamilia Connell, Afy Fletcher, Cherry Ann Fraser, Shabika Gajnabi, Jannillea Glasgow, Chinelle Henry, Zaida James, Djenaba Joseph, Ashmini Munisar, Karishma Ramharack, Stafanie Taylor, Rashada Williams