Spinner, spinner, Ashes winner: The story of 'Girl Grimmett'

Following the precedent and profile generated by the maiden tour to Australia by England's women's cricket team in 1934-35, little time was wasted in arranging a reciprocal visit to the United Kingdom.

Such was the competition for places in Australia's 15-woman touring party for that 1937 sojourn, a number of rigorous pre-departure trial games were played during the preceding home summer in addition to the national women's championships.

The Australian Women's Cricket Council then looked to further encourage the game's national development by selecting at least one player from each of the five competing mainland states.

But it was the naming of 19-year-old spin-bowling allrounder Peggy Antonio from foundation state Victoria that delivered one of the series' hottest talking points.

Antonio was two months shy of her 20th birthday when the squad set sail for England on April 4, 1937 and aware of the close eye being kept upon her by protective team manager Ruth Preddey.

The fact Antonio was able to make it aboard the boat represented a triumph in itself.

The funding challenges facing women's cricket in inter-war Australia were such that players had to pay their own fare which – at £75 each (around $7500 today) – amounted to almost a full year's basic wage for a working woman.

Antonio's father – a Chilean waterside worker of French-Spanish heritage – had died when she was 15 months old and her family circumstances made the financial prospect of an England tour even more distant than the disembarkation point at Southampton.

"My family didn't have a razoo," Antonio recalled years later.

"Going was just out of the question."

However, by dint of her cricket deeds Antonio had become something of a local celebrity among the working-class community of Port Melbourne where she learned the game playing against boys in the street.

Realising she couldn't generate sufficient pace to trouble her batting rivals, she instead set about mastering leg spin and a few other impromptu variations.

Upon leaving school, Antonio undertook a typing-shorthand course but at the height of the Great Depression the first job she could find was as a machinist making boxes at Raymond's shoe factory in Collingwood.

Raymond's also fielded its own women's cricket team in Melbourne competition and that's where Antonio came under the tutelage of coach, Eddie Conlon.

However, the most persuasive influence on the aspiring allrounder was Australia Test legend and fellow leggie Clarrie Grimmett whose books on bowling became part of the teenager's travelling cricket kit.

"I could almost quote these word for word," she said of the well-worn books when interviewed prior to the inaugural women's international between Australia and England in 1934.

"For four years I have practised his system and my bowling improved wonderfully."

With the prospect of Australia's 'Girl Grimmett' (as the press dubbed her) missing the maiden women's tour to England because of cost, the Port Melbourne community rallied behind their diminutive heroine with fundraising dinner-dances and threepenny raffles.

But the issue was definitively resolved when James McLeod, managing director of Victorian Stevedoring, donated the full £75 for Antonio's fare and she boarded the boat in Fremantle.

The first formal obligation of Australia skipper Margaret Peden's touring party was a reception at 10 Downing Street hosted by Lucy Baldwin, wife of then-Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin who had reputedly caught the eye of her future husband while batting for Yorkshire's 'White Heather Ladies'.

It had been Antonio's eye-catching efforts with the ball that had captured the attention of England's skipper Betty Archdale during her team's 1934-35 venture down under.

"It will be grand to meet Peggy again off the field, but I am not so anxious to meet her on," Archdale said prior to the return encounter in England.

"Small, dark, bright-eyed, red-cheeked and with a large grin, Peggy is an excellent all-round cricketer.

"Her bowling causes the most trouble to opponents, and I do not think we have any bowler as good in England."

Despite notching an unbeaten century in a preceding tour game against Kent, Antonio could not have made a worse start to the three-match international series when the opener was bowled by Betty Belton before a run had been scored in the first 'Test' at Northampton.

Australia recovered to post 300 and claimed the wicket of England opener Mollie Child shortly before stumps, and returned following the traditional Sunday rest day to witness 'Girl Grimmett' set up their first-ever Test win.

From 18.2 overs, Antonio spun a web to collect 6-51 (including three opponents bowled and one stumped) as England slumped from 3-120 to 204 all out.

Australia then suffered an even more calamitous collapse to reach stumps on day two 9-91 and just 187 runs ahead, and when England scored almost half their eventual day-three victory target of 199 for the loss of a solitary wicket their unbeaten record against Australia seemed set to remain intact.

It was opening bowler Kath Smith's removal of England's number three Joan Davis – who had missed the 1934-35 tour to Australia because it was deemed socially unacceptable for wives to leave their husbands for long periods – that changed the match.

The tourists' bowlers then ran amok with Smith (4-50) and Antonio (3-40) engineering a stunning turnaround as the hosts surrendered 6-32 before being dismissed for 167, handing Australia an historic first 'Test' win by 31 runs.

Having captured nine wickets in the series opener, Antonio then added a further eight in her team's 25-run defeat in the second match at Blackpool.

Another two in the first innings of the rain-affected drawn final match at The Oval meant she finished the series as leading wicket-taker with 19 at an average of 11.5.

Among Australia bowlers, only Hugh Trumble (26 at 14.27) and Charles 'Terror' Turner (21 at 12.43) have been more successful across a three-Test campaign on English soil.

Such was Antonio's celebrity in the aftermath of that historic series, she stayed on in the UK to take part in 'Cricket Week' and was selected to play in a team captained by England's star allrounder Myrtle Maclagan.

Upon her return to Victoria in October 1937, Antonio was honoured with a reception at Port Melbourne town hall before returning to domestic cricket where the then 21-year-old captained Victoria to a national carnival win in the summer of 1938-39.

But after preparing for the opening match of the following season, she revealed she had lost her passion for the game which had become too serious and announced her immediate retirement from all cricket aged 22.

Instead, Antonio vowed to pursue other sporting interests she had been previously forced to eschew ("I will play golf, tennis, swim — just do anything and everything but play cricket") before marrying Englishman Eddie Howard in 1943 and raising a large family.

"Quite simply it had stopped being fun," she recounted years later on her decision to walk away from cricket when at the top of her game.

"I got sick of the grind, grind, grind. You had to win, win, win.

"It just soured me."