By Jaidyn Kennedy <\/p>\n
Women\u2019s cricket is in pretty good shape right now\u2013 and that is no small part due to the efforts of Werribee\u2019s Anne Gordon and her ilk. <\/p>\n
On Australia Day, she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for her contributions to the sport as player, coach and administrator.<\/p>\n
That all-rounder and left-hand fast bowler has hit massive heights but certainly started humbly. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn the 1950s, Moe was a pretty young town and the boys used to play cricket, using the front gates as the wickets,\u201d Ms Gordon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey used to hit the ball over the fence to a woman who had a very lovely garden\u2013 and now that I am older I can see why she used to confiscate it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce I went to go get it and they let us have the ball back, so the boys allowed us to play so we could go get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
After spending a lot of time down in Melbourne, she got the nod to play state cricket for Victoria at 18 during the early 1960s.<\/p>\n
Becoming captain of Australia and a selector for junior cricket in England throughout the 1970s, she and her squads had epiphanies that went beyond the pitch. <\/p>\n
A big one was witnessing political unrest and strife in Jamaica in 1973.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is also the journey\u2013 a lot of us hadn\u2019t realised that we had such a good life in Australia\u2013 and when a lot of us went to Jamaica, we mixed with a lot of people on tour and grew up a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
The impact she and her generation have had on the sport is evident in the young girls and women she still mentors. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is quite fulfilling really, because there are girls who are willing to listen to the stories.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are also willing to also put a lot more effort into the game, whereas before they used to be half hearted because they never had much in the way of coaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was asked for her best coaching tip: <\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing is to show faith when things are going bad\u2026 you just have to be there and nurture them through situations.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jaidyn Kennedy Women\u2019s cricket is in pretty good shape right now\u2013 and that is no small part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-437308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}