it makes sense to take the game to the people as much as possible. however the wet season in darwin wont help the cause! also when compairing footy to cricket. footy can be played in 2 and a half hours, cricket is a long time to spend in the northern territorry sun espechally if your trying to get people interested in the sport! with footy past players of indigenous background like micheal long or gavin wanganeen will go promote the game in these communities and there are success stories to come out of it like jarra now playing for melbourne. when it comes to cricket jason gillespie is the only one and its not like he came from one of these communities or even from the NT. not much of a path for any of these kids to follow on from! not saying it cant be done, but cricket has a lot to catch up on.

Agree entirely. Unfortunately, the CA constitution as it is written means this will never happen. The state boards will not give up their privileges or their access to the Cricket Australia cash. The states need to be removed from the CA structure and a commission put in place similar to the AFL commission if changes like this are to take place

Apart from the Victorian bias (ie. forgetting about the Rugby dominated states of NSW and QLD) this is quite a good article.

Note that New Zealand also suffers from a paucity of Maories in their national and domestic set-up whereas half of the All Blacks are Pacific Islander or of Maori origin.

Other countries like India needs to truly utilise its billion plus population also by expanding into the poorer areas like Bihar, Orissa, UP and the North-East.

On a positive note, expanding cricket into the North-Western provices of Pakistan (mostly inhabited by Pashtuns) have lead the game to cross over into Afghanistan (where the Southern parts are also inhabited by Pashtuns).

local cricket in darwin is played during winter, and the afl play in summer here.
I'd love to watch more cricket in darwin or cairns. Its been a few years now since bangladesh had their series here and I still see cricket hats from that tour around - and not just on my head! Cairns has a fantastic venue, townsville has recently upgraded theirs and held 20/20 games.
the population of darwin is only the size of a regional city in australia and is made up of a largely transient population. I read of positive moves for the two australian champion league teams to play trials in darwin. that is a positive step, but would love to see more international cricket.

"Other countries like India needs to truly utilise its billion plus population also by expanding into the poorer areas like Bihar, Orissa, UP and the North-East."

They already play in Ranji Trophy.

@Gizza -
Other countries like India needs to truly utilise its billion plus population also by expanding into the poorer areas like Bihar, Orissa, UP and the North-East.

Just to let you know the Captain of Indian Cricket team comes from one of the smallest and poorest states of India ( Jharkhand). Suresh Raina the powerhouse of T20 comes from a small village in UP. Sreeshanth comes from Kerela where football holds fort.
Indians have already done the national integration in cricket. Criketers now do not come from the Elite centers of Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi but they come from Ghaziabad, Ranchi, Trichi, Kanpur, Jalandhar

Sorry but could not help commenting on another jibe on my country, no offense meant