Cricket reaches out for talent

SPORT

By JAMIE HARO
THE sport of cricket is slowly but surely tapping into rural communities nationwide with the intent to identify local talents and raise future cricket stars.
This is also a significant start of developing a pathway that identify the next crop of talents to represent PNG in the junior national teams, Garamuts or Siales, and hopefully into the senior level as part of the Barramundis and the Lewas where the country’s best get to compete against tougher cricket nations in ICC T20 sanctioned tournaments.
Cricket PNG’s CEO Richard Done believes driving cricket at the domestic level is a major step forward to revive the code nationwide, especially in centres that are unreachable and those that have less cricket following than NCD and Central.
CPNG engaged regional managers and development officers who have been running the BSP School Cricket Programme in their districts and provinces for the past few years with a few changes taking place domestically this year.
“Personally I am really passionate about driving domestic cricket and not just within the Central and the NCD areas where traditionally it’s very strong but getting into some other areas including past strongholds in Milne Bay, Morobe (Lae), Madang and in the New Britain provinces, and hopefully into New Ireland,” Done said.
“The biggest news for us is the appointment of six regional cricket managers who can work with our domestic cricket manager Lakani Oala to try and establish cricket associations apart from running school cricket programme in outside centres, we want more people to be get involved in association games and expand the knowledge of the code,” Done said.
Cricket has reached an estimated 1.9 million participants around the country over the 10 to 15 years. In the recent 2024 Domestic Cricket Annual Cricket Conference in Port Moresby, 11 development officers among the regional cricket managers were able to up-skill their knowledge to drive the main agendas forward for this year.
“This conference itself is a key part of making that happen, the other areas we’re working hard on are training and education particularly in umpiring, coaching and scoring through the International Cricket Council (ICC) programme,” Done said. Additionally, Domestic Cricket Manager Lakani Oala says currently there are variations around country in terms of cricket programme however with the introduction of Malolo Cricket ‘Hard Ball’ competition can allow participants to be on the same page with everything.
“This year we will be rolling out more Malolo programmes within the country and we are confident that we will go between the 171 teams we have to target anything between 250-300 playing teams within the country.”
“As mentioned about the ICC programme up skilling knowledge of umpires, coaching and scoring. As we progress to develop players, we also want to progress on with our umpires, coaches, and scorers.”
“ICC has built in a platform where all umpires all over the world will be also following the same program. All the umpiring courses will be under one program the same for coaching also the same.
“They’re handing out coaching courses where everybody wants to be on the same level and that is why we are introducing the programme to outside centres to incorporate with the Malolo Cricket programme.”
The BSP school cricket programme has been an effective programme reaching many schools nationwide however late last year CPNG introduced ICC’s new Criio cricket programme.
CPNG participation programmes manager Henao Samuel said both programme share similarities with the same goal to reach a wider cricket audience and participation. Criio however can reach any age group and tap into rural communities.
“The goal of cricket is not just only for kids in the schools but we’d like to extend the program into the communities and one of our key barriers is about language, so ICC in collaboration with Cricket PNG decided to work on a customized version and create Criio programme booklets in Tok Pisin,” Samuel said.
“Our aim now is to ensure cricket will be delivered to even our rural communities so we have a lot of opportunities all around the country. That is why we have our development officers who’ve undergone training as coaches as well.
“I also have another role as an ICC coach tutor, so one way to increase more participation is to ensure that we’re providing the right education for the children, and so we have to more local coaches out there trained and qualified to give quality coaching to our kids and players around the country.
“This is a really an exciting thing that ICC have done translating the programme this not just into but into a number of other languages and Tok Pidgin is one of them. A great opportunity for us and for cricket going forward,” he said.

Apart from BSP School Cricket and the newly introduced Criio programme another cricket community programme was initiated to help support schools. Santos Love Cricket is another domestic cricket programme and an initiative targeted to help young kids.
Programme coordinator Margaret Sibona explains that cricket has become a module now recognised in the education system to be taught during physical education classes through a partnership with the education department via provincial education boards.
“There are 33 staff in this particular development programme and we are trying to expand it to East New Britain, New Ireland, and Gulf. That’s why the interest comes forth from those areas,” Sibona said.
“We have development programmes and we are trying to expand up to the Highlands region and introduce another curriculum for focused areas which are urban centers in NCD and Lae. The reason why came on board is because Lae is the second largest city in Papua New Guinea. So we feel that that is also an area for us to see and mold children with life skills cricket programme.”
“Cricket is for everyone and we encourage all parents and all children to love our cricket because it’s a family-oriented sport in PNG.”