The New Zealand women's cricket team played their first Test match in 1935, when they lost to England. Since then they have only won two Tests, once against Australia, and once against South Africa.
Their greatest success in one-day cricket was when they won the 2000 World Cup under captain Emily Drumm. In a hotly contested final, they scored 184 to narrowly beat Australia by four runs, Australia being all out for 180.
They also play in the annual Rose Bowl series against Australia. On a tour to England in 2004, they played the first ever Twenty20 international (of either gender) against England.
Recently the team was involved in the 2007/2008 Rose Bowl series against Australia, a series that Australia won 3-2.
The team is known as the White Ferns, which is derived from the use of the fern as New Zealand's sporting emblem.
Famous quotes containing the words zealand, national, women, cricket and/or team:
“Teasing is universal. Anthropologists have found the same fundamental patterns of teasing among New Zealand aborigine children and inner-city kids on the playgrounds of Philadelphia.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to benumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.”
—Ida M. Tarbell (1857–1944)
“The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures—they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
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He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
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“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.””
—Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863)