Now Orange District Junior Cricket Association's president and the carnivals' coordinator, Mrs Hunter is one of the friendly faces you'll see at every ground, every day, championing the sport and frantically working to ensure their success every summer.

Her work in the cricketing community extends far beyond the annual, two-week event and like all those who have come before her motivation is borne from a love of the game, similarly she has little to no interest in accolades or recognition.

One big, and often understated difference, is the knowledge of and experience in the game Mrs Hunter (nee Garey) brings with her as one of just two Test cricketers Orange is known to have produced, along with Peter Toohey.

While George Bonnor, Jack Moroney and Jean Horner played for Australia and are also Orange Sporting Hall of Fame inductees they turned out in Orange District Cricket Association's (ODCA) competitions after their international careers.

After making history as the first female player to take the field in an Orange junior competition at just 11 Mrs Hunter went on to play in Sydney's top grade with Beralla, and was named in the NSW under-18 side at just 14.

She played for her state at the under-21 level as well and earned selection in Australia's under-21, under-23 and under-25 sides, touring New Zealand with the second of those three national outfits while the latter's tour of India was cancelled due to political unrest.

Her ultimate dream came true in January of 1995 when she was elevated to the open Australian women's outfit, playing one Test and three One-Day Internationals on a tour of New Zealand.

Considering the recent and overdue rise in women's cricket and the Western NSW Junior Cricket Carnivals' girls' competition, there's few better to speak to than the former Orange City Cricket Club ace, who highlighted profile as one of the biggest changes.

"That's probably in terms of women's sport in general, because it's no longer a strange thing to see it's more of a 'how great is this' attitude and in that respect it's just fantastic," Mrs Hunter said.

"The Twenty20 World Cup this year I think is going to be absolutely huge and maybe the genuine step forward into the mainstream, that's wonderful, and it's great to see the media behind it all now too because there's always been great players they've maybe just not had the coverage.

"Our first girls' team was an ACT side in 2016 and they played in the boys' competition before we introduced the stand-alone competition, it's been fantastic since. All the girls are so excited to play and they tend to come away from it loving their cricket even more."

Another massive shift Mrs Hunter identified was in 'the acceptability' of women's sport, at the top level but also in terms of young female players who compete in the traditional boys' competitions, like the 2016 ACT side did.

In doing so herself all those years ago Mrs Hunter paved the way for some of Orange's more-recent female products like Kira Churchland, Hannah Grady and now Sydney Thunder star Phoebe Litchfield.

"I was never allowed to not play, no, it was always fine but at times you did face the classic 'oh it's a boys' sport what are you doing that for?', but I don't think that's an issue at all anymore, it's encouraged now I think," Mrs Hunter said.

"Actually I think it's absolutely essential from a development point of view. Playing in the boys' competition helped me develop because for girls, for anyone actually, to improve they need to be playing against better competition and while there's always exceptions, the boys do naturally provide that.

"Obviously there is a big and continued push to have all-girls' competitions and that's fantastic and really important from a participation perspective and we're seeing that work with the two Western Zone sides in [next week's] under-15 girls' carnival.

"We love being able to give them that opportunity to play as well."