Women's Ashes top 20: Raelee Thompson re-lives the 1984-85 Test series and final match from hell

Of course, there is personal satisfaction — enough to fuel the rest of your days and nights.

In the second back row of the grandstand named after two Test cricketers, Raelee Thompson is sitting with her memories on a dusty vinyl cushion. She moved to Melbourne as a young woman and started playing softball, mentioning to her coach one afternoon that she might want to give cricket a try.Thompson found cricket fun and she was an excellent fast bowler, batter and fielder.Looking down at the hard-hitting 40-over-a-side game on the not-a-grass-out-of-place Junction, the 76-year-old is complimentary.

For the next two decades, she would be asked to give expert evidence in court cases for murders, rapes and armed hold-ups. Jennings and Hill played until 1977. Thompson kept going. Seven years later, she was selected to play for Australia against England in a five-test Jubilee Series celebrating the England women's tour of Australia in 1984/85.

Denise Emerson made 58 in anchoring a first-innings total of 232, and Denise Martin took 4-24, helping restrict the English to 140. The home side kept its advantage until the last ball was bowled, winning by 117."It just flowed over into Bendigo," Thompson remembers."And they were a bit grumpy too," Thompson says.

She told the batters to rest in bed while the rest of the team went out to take five more wickets, using the 12th and 13th players from the squad as substitute fielders, as well as a club player from Melbourne, who had come up from the city to watch. A major decision for her standing aside was that mates like Lorraine Hill and Margaret Jennings were no longer around."It was the right time, but I didn't have any really close friends playing in that team anymore," she says.

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