What is the reward for a great achievement on the field of play if neither fame nor money exists?
Of course, there is personal satisfaction — enough to fuel the rest of your days and nights.
But an even-richer prize runs through most long sporting lives and it makes you envious when you see it because it is so lovely and true.
It is with us right here in the old Blackie-Ironmonger Stand overlooking a game at the Junction Oval between Victoria and New South Wales.
The panoramic scene is laid out like a framed photograph under a sky as bright as the visiting players' uniform, with birds calling from the trees behind the nets and car engines humming up and down busy old St Kilda Road.
In the second back row of the grandstand named after two Test cricketers, Raelee Thompson is sitting with her memories on a dusty vinyl cushion.
You should know what she had to go through as captain of Australia against England in the remarkable summer of 1984-85.
When it was over, she cried for hours and never played another Test for her country.
Country girl, talented sportswoman, cop
Thompson was born in the Victorian town of Shepparton in 1945.
There was no club cricket for the first 21 years of her life.
"It just wasn't something that I was aware of … that you could play," she says.
She moved to Melbourne as a young woman and started playing softball, mentioning to her coach one afternoon that she might want to give cricket a try.
Her coach, who happened to know Collingwood's leading player, Dawn Rae, made some introductions.
Thompson found cricket fun and she was an excellent fast bowler, batter and fielder.
Comparisons against modern players are kind to all athletes.
Looking down at the hard-hitting 40-over-a-side game on the not-a-grass-out-of-place Junction, the 76-year-old is complimentary.
"It's really athletic these days and that's, I think, what they do with all their extra time is run and run," she says.
"Some of the fielding is fantastic as well.
Away from cricket, Thompson became a police officer, spending nine months doing general duties and another nine months in the information bureau at Russell Street headquarters before joining the specialist fingerprinting department.
For the next two decades, she would be asked to give expert evidence in court cases for murders, rapes and armed hold-ups.
The force paid her enough money to afford expensive cricket tours and awarded her enough annual leave to keep playing the sport she started to love.
One of the great moments of Thompson's life came at the beginning of her representative cricket career in 1968.
Playing for the Victorian Second XI, she met Lorraine Hill and Margaret Jennings: they became best friends, who came to be known around the ovals of Melbourne as The Three Musketeers.
Thompson, Jennings and Rae would make their international debut for Australia against New Zealand in February 1972.
Hill would arrive in the Australian side in 1975.
There weren't many chances to play for the national side during the 1970s, so those rare Tests and tours were treasured.
Jennings and Hill played until 1977. Thompson kept going. Seven years later, she was selected to play for Australia against England in a five-test Jubilee Series celebrating the England women's tour of Australia in 1984/85.
At 39, Raelee Thompson would be required to bowl no fewer than 188 overs in four-day matches at the WACA, Adelaide Oval, Gabba, Gosford and the gold mining town of Bendigo.
And she would be asked to do more than that.
A reluctant leader
England arrived for the tour in December 1984 with a heavy schedule of 11 tour matches, five Tests and three one-day internationals.
The first Test was in Perth.
Australia's captain was future Australia Cricket Hall of Fame quickie Tredrea, the fastest bowler in the world.
The drawn WACA match would be remembered for Tredrea tearing her Achilles tendon.
Thompson, who'd started the series with impressive match figures of took 6-97, was asked by "manageress" Ann Mitchell, among others, to stand in as captain.
"I still didn't want to do it, when we were talking about it," Thompson says.
"But wiser heads than I prevailed. I didn't speak to Sharon because she'd already gone. She might've come home because it was really bad. She was really upset by it, which I don't blame her."
The second Test was in Adelaide. England won by five runs after being bowled out for 90 in the first innings.
The third Test was in Brisbane. A draw. England led 1-nil after three matches.
Thompson's side needed a mighty comeback and it started at Grahame Park, Gosford (now known as Central Park Stadium). The Poms won the toss and sent Australia in.
Denise Emerson made 58 in anchoring a first-innings total of 232, and Denise Martin took 4-24, helping restrict the English to 140. The home side kept its advantage until the last ball was bowled, winning by 117.
Series 1-1. Last stop, country Victoria.
The Australia team was "up and happy".
"It just flowed over into Bendigo," Thompson remembers.
Late-night drama in the gold mining town
England was tiring after a long tour.
"And they were a bit grumpy too," Thompson says.
The pitch at Queen Elizabeth Oval was well-prepared, as all the wickets were that summer; playing conditions were "fabulous".
It would've been nice to bat first but the home team lost the toss again (0-5 for the series) and spent a day in the field being slowly cooked by the late January sun.
England made 196.
Both Denise Martin and Lyn "Leftie" Fullston took two wickets.
It was Raelee Thompson's finest hour of outswing bowling: from 28 tireless overs, she bagged a career-best 5-33, including the wicket of England's captain Jan Southgate (nee Allen), who made 59.
"I remember that," Thompson says.
Asked whether she celebrated her wickets with fist pumps or high fives, Thompson laughs and shakes her head.
"Just an old, common howzat," she says.
Her bowling average for the series was an outstanding 15.74.
Australia batted impressively, making 285 before Thompson declared the innings closed eight wickets down.
Jill Kennare was top scorer with a magnificent 104.
"It was a good innings from Jill because she hadn't been playing well," Thompson says.
"So it was nice that she was able to turn it around."
Openers Denise Emerson (43) and Peta Verco (40) were also outstanding.
The third day was special for Thompson because her father Lindsay was in the crowd.
"It was the first time he'd ever seen me play," she says.
England was five wickets down at stumps with one day remaining in the series.
To win, the Aussies needed to take five more wickets and chase a target of 100 or so.
The batters' bug strikes
A good sleep was required for the effort to come. However, there was no rest whatsoever — because gastro had made its way around the entire touring party.
"The thing that was worrying was all the sick people," Thompson says.
It must've been something they ate for lunch or afternoon tea — but they never found the source.
Some of the English players were crook, so was one of the umpires and the Australian scorer.
Thompson's roommate Lyn Larsen was terribly ill.
The captain went to see manageress Ann Mitchell, who volunteered to swap rooms so she could look after Larsen.
Thomson soon got a knock on the door from one of her teammates.
"Where's Ann?"
"She's in my room looking after Lyn Larsen, who's sick."
"Oh God, [number five batter] Karen Read is sick."
People started checking on each other. First innings hero Jill Kennare was also butcher's hook.
It went on all night.
"So, here am I in the room handling all these calls at seven in the morning down to Ann, who's in my room," Thompson says.
"We've got all these sick people and they're all our batters."
Raelee Thompson called on all her experience as a problem-solving senior police officer and veteran of the game to manage her team.
She told the batters to rest in bed while the rest of the team went out to take five more wickets, using the 12th and 13th players from the squad as substitute fielders, as well as a club player from Melbourne, who had come up from the city to watch.
Luckily, Peta "Cookie" Verco (3-30) and Debbie Wilson (3-40) were fit and thriving. England made 204. Australia needed 118 for victory.
"By the time we went into bat, it's after lunch," Thompson explains.
"They [the sick batters] had those first couple of hours back in the motel. The motel was across from the ground."
The unwell returned and padded up. One last time, they got the runs.
Verco (40) opened the batting with Emerson (23). Jill Kennare shrugged off her awful night to make 42.
Relief overwhelmed Thompson in victory.
"All I did was cry for the next six or seven hours," she says from her perch in the old grandstand 37 years later.
A dinner was held to celebrate Australia's first series win since 1963.
"All I remember after that was the manageress and I, at one o'clock in the morning, were eating pizza in the main street of Bendigo because I was hungry."
No more Tests for the winning captain
Australia and England played three one-day games before the tour in February 1985.
Thompson then finished her international career, having played 16 tests and 23 ODIs between 1972-1985.
A major decision for her standing aside was that mates like Lorraine Hill and Margaret Jennings were no longer around.
She missed them.
"It was the right time, but I didn't have any really close friends playing in that team anymore," she says.
"All the people that I first played with had retired way back. So I thought, no I don't want to play without my friends anymore. I'd played without them for a few years as it was."
Thompson became a national selector and captain-coached Essendon Maribyrnong Park Ladies Cricket Club, playing with her friends Hill and Jennings.
The Three Musketeers have been inseparable ever since.
A trio of champions
"I'll introduce you," Thompson says, rising from her second back row seat to walk down to the front of the Blackie-Ironmonger Stand.
"This is Lorraine and Marg."
The three friends who met 54 years ago sit and watch the game, their favourite thing to do.
Batter Nicole Faltum is out in the middle, hitting the ball so hard as to make a whip-cracking sound.
"She's quite strong off the back foot, isn't she?" Jennings says to Thompson and Hill.
Then they witness a reverse sweep, a previously unconventional stroke.
And they laugh.
One of them starts talking about national selection.
"See, I'd rather see [Rachael] Haynes in the middle order," Hill says. "She can knock the ball around and she can hit the big shots when she needs to."
The others nod in recognition.
A photographer in the grandstand presses his button and the camera bursts into fluttering.
A third party asks these former Australian Test players about the changes in women's cricket since their day.
Thompson expresses concern.
"It's a game that you enjoy," she says. "Some people talk about the money [but] it's their job. They get paid to do what they do. In lots of respects, I don't envy them one bit because they're beholden now to the bigwigs, their states or international. They're forever training. They don't have much of a life if you ask me," she says.
"They can't build themselves a career. It's only a limited time that you can play cricket. You can play for Australia but somewhere along the line, you stop getting paid. They have to have something to fall back on."
Thompson finished her career with Victoria Police as a senior sergeant in 1990 before taking up a role with the state gaming commission.
In recent years, she has become a mentor for girls playing cricket.
Sometimes it gets her thinking about her overall contribution.
"A lot of accolades come to you many years after you've played," she says of her MCC membership at Lords and honorary membership at the Melbourne Cricket Club.
"Like now, I'm 76, why didn't all this happen to me when I was 56? It would've been great to have all these things in your 50s and 60s.
"But, yeah, you look back and I'm proud of all those efforts but it's not something I think about all the time."
Which brings us back to the question of reward.
It's friendship — if you haven't already guessed.
"Sometimes when us oldies get together we'll banter about things that have happened in the past," Thompson is glowing in the company of the people she is talking about.
"I know we've sat over in those blue seats over there [in the modern grandstand at the Junction Oval] ... and the people around just laugh. They enjoy listening to us. But we do give each other heaps. We're all really, really good friends."
