Lorna Pauline Thomas (1 December 1917 – 17 September 2014) was an Australian

cricketer Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

from the 1930s to the 1950s and

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Au ...

team manager from 1963 to 1978. Lorna Thomas (née McCarthy) was first selected to play for the

New South Wales women's cricket team The New South Wales Women cricket team, also known as the New South Wales Breakers, is the women's representative cricket team for the Australian State of New South Wales. They play most of their home games at North Sydney Oval and they also us ...

in 1937. In the 1940s, she represented NSW against

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

and

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. After her playing career, Thomas managed the NSW and

women's cricket teams. She was the manager of the tour of New Zealand in 1960–61, the tour of England in 1963, the tour of New Zealand in 1971–72, the Australian team at the

1973 Women's Cricket World Cup The 1973 Women's Cricket World Cup was the inaugural Women's Cricket World Cup, held in England between 20 June and 28 July 1973. It was the first tournament of its kind, held two years before the first limited overs World Cup for men in 1975. T ...

. and the tour of England in 1976. She received the

MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...

in 1978 for services to women's cricket. She worked as a nurse in the New South Wales prison system, looking after the welfare of the women in the holding cells at

Sydney Central Police Station Sydney Central Police Station, 7–9 Central Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, is a police station with attached holding cells that operated in association with the Central Local Court House, Sydney, for nearly 100 years. Descripti ...

.''

Wisden ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

'' 2015, p. 222. On 17 September 2014, Thomas died at the age of 96.Lorna Thomas dies aged 96
/ref>

References

External links

at the

State Library of New South Wales The State Library of New South Wales, part of which is known as the Mitchell Library, is a large heritage-listed special collections, reference and research library open to the public and is one of the oldest libraries in Australia. Establish ...

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Lorna 1917 births 2014 deaths Australian women cricketers Members of the Order of the British Empire Place of birth missing