Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
About Peggy Antonio
- Peggy Antonio (2 June 1917 – 11 January 2002, Melbourne, Australia) was an Australian women's Test cricketer, known as the "Girl Grimmett". Antonio was raised in Port Melbourne, Victoria, a working class suburb of Melbourne.
- Her father was a Chilean docker of French and Spanish descent who died when she was 15 months.
- With the encouragement of her uncle she learnt her cricket from the boys in her neighbourhood streets.
- As a young girl during the Great Depression, she was lucky enough to find work at a shoe factory in the industrial suburb of Collingwood.
- The factory was home to a women's cricket team where Antonio came to the attention of Eddie Conlon, a club cricketer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the game.
- With the assistance of Conlon, Antonio developed a rare mix of leg spin and off spin, including a top spinner and a wrong'un.She came to the attention of the Australian Women's Cricket Council and was invited to play for Victoria against the travelling English team.
- Taking 10/48, including the star batswoman, Molly Hide, she was selected to represent Australia in the inaugural women's Test match at the Brisbane Exhibition Ground at the age of 17.
- The first Australian to take a wicket in women's Test cricket, Antonio took twelve wickets in the three Test series and was considered suitable for a publicity date with the great Don Bradman.Invited to tour England in 1937, the £75 passage was beyond the means of a shoe factory worker and her family.
- A campaign started and thanks mainly to the generosity of James McLeod, a businessman and sometime acquaintance of her late father, the necessary funds were raised to allow her to take her place in the squad.
- Antonio proved successful again on the tour taking 9/101 in Northampton and 8/65 at Blackpool.The final Test of the series at The Oval would be Antonio's last.
- Tiring of the grind and no longer finding the game enjoyable, she retired from cricket at the age of 20.
- In 1943 she married Eddie Howard, an Englishman resident in Australia, and settled down into domestic life, raising a large family.
- She died in Melbourne in 2002.
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