Patsy May is a former Test and ODI allrounder who played for Australia between 1968/9 and 1976. She played in the inaugural World Cup in 1973 and took the first wicket by an Australian bowler at Lords cricket ground.
Born on 22nd August 1947 in Camberwell, Melbourne, Patsy was a right arm medium pace bowler and right-hand batter with the unique statistic of having a higher batting average (19.00) than her highest score (17). Of course Patsy was primarily in the team for her bowling skills. In her debut Test at Thebarton Oval in Adelaide under the leadership of Muriel “Pixie” Picton, the youngster picked up two fairly handy wickets, Enid Bakewell and Rachael Heyhoe.
In 1971/2 Patsy played in Miriam Knee’s Australian team that went down to Trish McKelvey’s New Zealand team in a thriller at St Kilda. A trip to Jamaica followed in the lead up to the World Cup in England and Patsy has the distinction of playing in that first cricket World Cup.
Back in England under the leadership of Anne Gordon, Patsy played her final Test, the first of the series. But she wasn’t done with the Test cricket – in the second Test of that series she was an official scorer.
A final hurrah in international cricket, Patsy continued in the ODI team on that 1976 tour and was one of the eleven Australian women to first play at Lords, on August 4th 1976 and the first Australian bowler to take a wicket on the ground.