InMobi

Heart & soul: Christina Matthews joins Hall of Fame

Australia's most capped female Test cricketer and a World Cup winner, the Victoria-born 'keeper is a true legend of the sport

Christina Matthews insists she is not a particularly emotional person. But when, as a 24-year-old Test debutant in 1984, she stood alongside her teammates, saw her country's flag, and heard her country's anthem, the opposite seemed true.

"The last thing I expected to do was cry, and I did," she tells cricket.com.au. "It kind of hit me, the opportunity I was getting."

Four decades later and Matthews is revered as a bona fide legend of the sport. Australia's most capped women's Test cricketer is also today the 65th entrant into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame.

Fittingly for a cricketer of such renown, Matthews was born in Melbourne on Boxing Day, 1959. And while that year pre-dates the now annual marquee MCG Test, it wasn't long before Matthews was rolling up the day after Christmas to the famed venue as a teenage cricket fan.

Around that time, she remembers getting into the 'G for free after tea in Sheffield Shield matches, while later still, Matthews celebrated her 22nd birthday with the masses as Dennis Lillee sent the crowd into raptures with three late West Indian wickets on the opening day of the 1981 Boxing Day Test. Although, as she recalls with a laugh, those wickets came a little too late for her.

"Well, we'd decided to leave because nothing was happening," she says. "And as we're walking around the outside, we hear all the roars go up – we missed one of the most momentous moments.

"But if you love cricket in Melbourne, the MCG is such a big part of your life."

A young Matthews could hardly have dared to dream she would one day win a World Cup final there.

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Matthews' first interaction with cricket came alongside "a street full of boys" outside her family home in Nunawading, in Melbourne's east. It was a different time, one that had both its pros and cons for a girl who loved sport.

"Summer and winter were spent playing footy or cricket on the road, as you used to do in those days, with all the neighbours' kids coming out and having these games," she says.

"My parents were avid sports watchers, so they watched a lot of cricket and footy on the telly. I was really engaged with that, and wanted to be part of that.

"People in those days said to me, 'No, no, you play netball and softball'. But I wanted to play what was on the telly.

"Very luckily, when I was 12, my mother saw a local women's team playing (cricket), and asked me if I wanted to go down and have a go. So that's what I did."

As she details it, Matthews was no world beater in those early years. In fact, she remembers collecting no fewer than six ducks in her first season. But despite that, cricket had her – she enjoyed the sense of community within the club perhaps as much as the game itself. Her focus only really narrowed when, as a 16-year-old, she picked up a copy of Australian Women's Weekly.

"I'd been on my club cricket committee since I was 14, and then I saw this article about the Australian women's team going to England in 1976," she recalls.

"It was then that I realised that there is a pathway to playing for Australia as a woman. And at that point, I thought: that's what I want to do.

"It wasn't connected so much to me from a talent point of view, as it was just the fact it was a possibility."

It was a seminal moment. In a lesson that would, decades later, be virtually inscribed in the promotional pillars of women's cricket, Matthews simply needed to see what she could be.

Through the next phase of her life, as she moved from teen to young adult, the big decisions she made were based around achieving her ambition of playing cricket for Australia.

Christina Matthews behind the stumps for Victoria // MCC Library

Having already developed a love for wicketkeeping ("I was crap at everything else," she grins, "and what I enjoyed was, I was the centre of the game … it was my job to encourage everybody, and that suited my personality"), Matthews began training more intently in the backyard with her father, a goalkeeper who would set up various drills he had learned in soccer.

Forcing herself to overcome the natural timidness of her youth, she approached various male cricketing figures about learning her craft. One of those was legendary Englishman Frank 'Typhoon' Tyson, who was at the time coaching director with Victoria.

"I was in my early 20s by then, and I organised a meeting with him to see if I could find a wicketkeeping coach," Matthews recalls. "What I didn't know was, you'd never have meetings with Frank Tyson after lunch (laughs).

"In the end he was very helpful – he put me on to (former Vics 'keeper) Dave Cowper, and so, bit by bit, I started finding wicketkeepers who could teach me a little bit about it.

"I was really, really shy. But I wanted it, and I knew no-one else was going to do it for me, so I plucked up the courage."

By then Matthews had also enjoyed the fortune of crossing paths with Lynn Denholm, who had played eight Tests for Australia from 1963-77 and was a pioneering voice among female cricket coaches.

"She was way ahead of her time in the way she ran club training, and how she talked about the mental skills of cricket," she says. "In our preseason training, we were doing so many different drills that are still relevant today.

"I got a really good understanding of what you needed to do to be a good cricketer. It was then up to me to develop those skills, which I did probably in my late teens and early 20s."

* * *

If the final two days of 1983 were significant ones for Matthews, the month that followed was life-changing.

Having edged towards state selection after a handful of years with Victoria's Under 21s team, she was picked to compete in her first National Championships at Sydney's Macquarie University. Across December 30-31, in a clash containing a who's who of champion Australian cricketers, she made three from No.8 and completed a stumping, quietly moving herself onto the first-class scene and one step closer to her burning ambition.

Matthews didn't set the world alight in that tournament, but the stars were about to spectacularly align for her. An Australian squad was set to tour India for four Tests and four ODIs that January. Yet with the national side having travelled there for the 1978 World Cup, there were players from that group who had reservations about returning.

"Whilst they won it, it wasn't a tour that they all enjoyed from a social point of view because of the conditions of playing in India," Matthews explains. "So a lot of the established players made themselves unavailable.

"And the lucky bit was, one of the selectors (Raelee Thompson) was vice-captain of the Victorian team, so I was standing in slips with her for the whole tournament."

Christian Matthews with teammates on the 1987 tour of England // supplied

Matthews had no such hesitations about touring. Her surprise call-up was the realisation of a near decade-long dream. Exactly three weeks after her first-class debut she found herself in Delhi, India's heaving capital, experiencing "massive culture shock" as one of five Australian ODI debutants. Two days after that, she was donning her Baggy Green for the first time.

"That India tour became a tour of really young, up-and-coming players," she recalls. "And so a lot of us got an opportunity that we may not have got until much later."

Matthews knew there was an element of good fortune to her initial selection. And so she resolved to make the most of it, and to ensure selectors had no reason to remove their new incumbent.

"A bit like gender equity, my theory is, I don't care how I get in the game, but I've got to do well to stay in the game," she says. "And that's how I approached it."

Stay she did. Across the next 11 years, as Australia's women played 20 Tests, Matthews was behind the stumps for every one of them, a lone permanent fixture as one generation morphed into the next.

She was there when Australia regained the Ashes for the first time in 21 years during the home summer of 1984-85, and again in 1987 as they won an Ashes series in England for the first time. In fact, Australia never relinquished the prized trophy on Matthews' watch.

In December 1988, Matthews was one of three players to appear in all nine matches as Australia surged to a third straight World Cup title. In the final – held at her beloved MCG – she took the catch from Lyn Larsen to dismiss England captain Jane Powell, before the home side eased to an eight-wicket win.

"Winning that World Cup, and playing on the MCG," she says, "was massive for me."

* * *

Between tours and international series, Matthews geared her life around cricket. Having trained to be a secretary, her first full-time job was in the Science faculty at Melbourne University. From there she worked predominantly in sport, taking roles with the Victorian Football Association, and later, hockey and then cricket in New South Wales.

And interstate move to Sydney precipitated more improvements in Matthews' game, as she joined forces on the training paddock with young gloveman Mark Atkinson, who would go on to enjoy a lengthy first-class career with Tasmania.

"We used to train together every day," she says. "He was magic. He really understood wicketkeeping from a player's perspective, and so working together and throwing balls to each other really refined my game, made me a really good 'keeper, and taught me how to coach wicketkeeping as well."

Despite being the incumbent national wicketkeeper, Matthews had to earn her place at New South Wales, and was even overlooked for selection ahead of what would have been her first National Championships with her adopted state.

"For a few weeks there," she recalls, "I actually thought my career was over."

Instead, around her 30th birthday, she answered an SOS call from the ACT, whose wicketkeeper had broken an ankle. For the next two seasons (1989-90 and 1990-91) she played eight matches for the nation's capital before agreeing to join up with New South Wales.

Christina Matthews behind the stumps in an ODI at Lord's in July 1987 // Getty

By that point Matthews had been in and out of the one-day side on three occasions, yet on the Test front, her best work was still to come. In the second Test against India in February 1991, played at St Peters College in Adelaide, she claimed a world record nine dismissals (8c, 1st) for the match, which also pushed her out in front as the 'keeper with the most dismissals in women's Test history. More than three decades on, both marks still belong to Matthews (she finished with 58 dismissals – 46 catches and 12 stumpings – from 20 Tests), while in the third Test of that series, she again claimed five catches in an innings – still the most by an Australian Test glovewoman.

"I remember that day I broke the (dismissals) record – I didn't even know there was a record to be broken," she laughs. "We actually had a drinks break, and a camera came on the ground, and the manager says, 'Oh, you've got to do an interview', which was unheard of in those days – cameras didn't come on the ground.

"But for me it meant I'd achieved something that would have some history in the game."

There was more history to come: at the 1993 Women's World Cup in England, Matthews added her name to the exclusive list of national captains, leading the Australians to a comfortable win over Denmark. In many ways, it was a fitting exclamation point on a stellar international career.

* * *

By the time Matthews played her final Test and ODI in the first half of 1995, she already had her head down and was busily working away in the administration side of the game. Her early work at Women's Cricket Australia (more than a decade prior to its merger with the Australian Cricket Board in 2003) and Cricket New South Wales included various positions, from women's development officer to coaching and development, through to more business-focused positions in commercial marketing and communications.

By 1997, she was working full-time for Women's Cricket Australia as head of the women's national team program, and she was even roped in as tour manager for the 1997 World Cup in India – a tournament she believes was one of the true game-changing moments (alongside the advent of the Women's Big Bash League) for women's cricket throughout her time in the sport.

"The timing was amazing … Cricket Australia made sure we were all hosted at the (men's) Sydney Test (three days later), and we did a lap of honour on day one in Sydney," she says.

"It really caught the attention of the corporate world … Cricket Australia realised that the public was expecting them to do more, and so we were able to leverage that with Commonwealth Bank coming on as major sponsor for the first time 12 months later."

Christina Matthews spent 12 years as WACA chief // Getty

Matthews went on to coach both Alyssa Healy and Ellyse Perry in the NSW Cricket pathways but her most prominent role this century came as WACA chief executive, a position she held for 12 years from December 2011. During that time, Western Australia captured an incredible 14 trophies across the men's and women's competitions – including an elusive Sheffield Shield breakthrough.

Last month, Matthews was appointed president of the Australian Cricketers' Association, where she is doubtless set to grow her reputation as one of the sport's true movers and shakers.

And while her achievements and standing as a boardroom giant extends well beyond the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame criteria, they help paint a picture of one of the most influential forces in the country's modern cricket landscape.

Typically, Matthews plays down her achievements as a player when judged against the current-day stars, though she misses the fact that the full-time professional status and busy schedules those players enjoy today are at least in part thanks to the foundations laid by her generation. In that regard, she again looms large as a remarkable figure in the evolution of the women's game.

"I never thought that my career would have been good enough to get inducted," she says. "Everybody sees their playing career differently, and I tend to look at mine in (comparison with) today's (players); we played once a year, or if we were lucky, sometimes we'd have a winter tour.

"And you think, compared to today, that just wouldn't stand up. But luckily, other people think it does, and I'm really proud. I put my heart and soul into it – everything I did during that time was to allow me to play for Australia.

"So yes, it's such an honour."