Meg Lanning has been pivotal in leading women's cricket to a new era.
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Speaking to the Newcastle Herald ahead of being a guest speaker at Wallsend District Cricket Club's sports lunch at Wallsend Diggers last Friday, Australia's greatest ever captain emphasised the role facilities and grounds at a grassroots level played in ensuring the female game continued to grow and thrive.
"Often the facilities and quality of grounds can be improved a lot," Lanning, who retired from international cricket last November, said.
"That can make it a little bit difficult to really enjoy the game if you don't have a really good experience in the sense of whether it's the changerooms.
"But even the quality of the fields. If women and girls can be playing on some of the better grounds and the best grounds then it gives them a really good experience and allows you to play the game as it should be."
The 32-year-old's 13-year career in the Australia team included a decade-long stint as captain and an unrivalled run of success with seven world titles, a Commonwealth Games gold medal and a host of records.
Lanning was unsure what the next chapter of her life looked like but said "opportunities for girls of any age to become involved in cricket" was key for the game's future.
Bringing elite cricket to regional areas such as Newcastle was also important.
"It just shows everybody what's possible," Lanning said. "When I grew up there was no women playing cricket on TV, so I didn't actually know that women played ... I wasn't always sure what the phrase, 'You can't be what you can't see' meant.
"It was said a lot but I didn't really understand. But I really do get it now and it's true. If you see your idols going out there and getting opportunities and chasing their dreams then that's a real inspiration for young girls.
"So, absolutely we need to try to reach a big audience, a broader audience, not just the main cities because there's so many people out in the smaller communities who want to play and be involved, which is really important for the game."
Outdated facilities are also a common issue throughout the region as female participation in sports increases.
Wallsend District Cricket Club (WDCC) are putting the focus on diversity as it approaches its 100th year.
President Peter Hanna said securing Lanning for the club's annual sports lunch and having former players Leah Poulton and Jenny Wallace on its legends panel was "an opportunity to build on the success of what the NDCA [Newcastle District Cricket Association] has done in women's cricket".
Wallsend fielded a team in Sydney's premier women's competition in the early 2000s and claimed championship glory in 2005-06 with a side that included Poulton and Wallace.
The club hopes to have two women's teams next season as well as an all-girls' side at junior level and Hanna said they were working with council through a facilities plan to address outdated changerooms.
"They're a key enabler for our program around women's cricket and diversity but at the moment they're a blocker, they're not an enabler," Hanna said.
Poulton, who went on to play for Australia and is now head of elite female cricket at Cricket NSW, said "removing barriers" was imperative to player retention and continued participation growth.
"If we want to retain people en masse and appeal to people en masse having things like female-friendly facilities are really important," Poulton said.
"Those sort of things get noticed by women because often you've got used to a certain standard over time. So, when clubs do invest in facilities that really appeals to women.
"It is a really nice moment to go, 'They're thinking about me, they're caring about me. They're investing in me'. So that's a really positive retention piece."
Poulton was part of Wallsend's "progressive" cricket academy as a junior and credited it to putting her on the path to playing at an elite level.
"I was at Wallsend junior cricket club and Wallsend men's senior club did this really cool thing where they had an academy for the juniors in the area, 30 years ago," Poulton said.
"Thinking back to all of the things we did, it was really progressive, not just on the female front ... we were doing things like whiteboard sessions, the psychology of the games, strength and conditioning sessions.
"But in terms of having women involved, because it was just one academy, they were really at the forefront of integrating women into their whole club.
"That was the first time I played under lights. We played a match under lights at Wallsend, it was on turf. I can remember that night so vividly still now.
"It felt really high-performance. I was probably 14 and it was this really pivotal moment for me. I actually felt like an elite cricketer. Someone was treating me like an elite athlete and it was so important. Then you allow yourself to project forward and go, what else can I do."
