Belinda Clark

Some careers are measured in records, and some in the standards they set for everyone who follows. Belinda Clark’s is both. She became the first cricketer, man or woman, to score a double century in a one-day international, but her greater legacy is the dominant Australian team she captained and the structure she helped build around it. Her story begins not in a stadium but in a Newcastle backyard, with a girl who dreamed of being a tennis player.

Belinda was born on 10 September 1970 in Newcastle, New South Wales, and she learned the game with her brother and two sisters in the backyard. Tennis was her first ambition, and for a while she pictured a future on the court. That changed when she played her first organised cricket match in her early teens at high school, and she was good enough to spend a season with boys at Eastern Suburbs Junior Cricket Club. Playing against boys taught her to back herself against anyone, and the wrist work she had built on the tennis court soon became a feature of her batting.

That confidence carried her quickly onto the big stage. By the 1990-91 summer she had won a place in the New South Wales side and, in the same season, a place in the Australian team, making her ODI debut in January 1991 as an opening batter. Less than two weeks later she walked out at North Sydney Oval for her first Test against India and scored a century on debut. At 20, she had shown that she could score quickly without losing her composure, and Australia knew they had found an opener for the long term.

Success was not smooth from there, because Australia struggled at the 1993 World Cup and needed a fresh start. Clark, still in her early 20s, took over as captain, and around her came the coach John Harmer and a group of talented young players. Together they built a bolder, more attacking style of cricket. The results showed in long winning streaks during her tenure, in which she captained Australia in 101 ODIs and 11 Tests.

All of that built towards the 1997 World Cup in India, where she opened with an unbeaten 93 and then, against Denmark in Mumbai, played the innings that changed the record books. She scored 229 not out off 155 balls as Australia made 412 for 3 and won by 363 runs, and the score stood as the highest in women’s ODIs for more than two decades. A few weeks later Australia faced New Zealand in the final at Eden Gardens in Kolkata, in front of a packed crowd, and Clark top-scored with 52 in a successful chase to bring the World Cup home.

The golden run continued after that. She made 136 against England at Worcester in 1998, her highest Test score, and was named Wisden Australia’s Cricketer of the Year, and in 2001 Australia won the Ashes 2-0. That same year brought a harder lesson, when she made 91 in the World Cup final against New Zealand and still lost by four runs. The defeat showed how thin the margin could be, and it gave her a reason to come back stronger.

She got that chance in 2005 in South Africa, where Australia went through the World Cup without losing a match and beat India in the final. It was a fitting finish to her playing days, and after a last Test at Worcester in August, she captained Australia in their first official women’s T20 international before stepping away. In 14 years she had scored 919 runs at 45.95 in 15 Tests and 4,844 runs at 47.49 in 118 ODIs, with 7 centuries across the two formats.

Her work in the game did not end there, because she had been building it off the field for just as long. Through most of her career, she held a demanding job as chief executive of Women’s Cricket Australia, and she later moved into senior roles at Cricket Australia, including executive general manager of community cricket, as well as work with Cricket NSW and the ICC Women’s Committee.

The honours followed for both halves of her career. She became a Member of the Order of Australia in 2000, the second woman inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame in 2011, and the first woman inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2014. Perhaps the most fitting tribute of all is that the top award for Australia’s women cricketers now carries her name, as the Belinda Clark Award, so each year’s winner is measured against the standard she set.