Forty-eight cricket pitches will be built and installed across Papua New Guinea over the next two years, which is expected to boost overall playing numbers by up to 30,000.
The US$400,000 project will be paid for out of the 2015 Cricket World Cup Community Facility Fund, a joint legacy project by the ICC, Cricket Australia and New Zealand Cricket, in partnership with the Australian Government.
Cricket PNG CEO Greg Cambell and Australian High Commissioner to PNG, Bruce Davis. Photo: ICC
Cricket PNG CEO Greg Campbell said the local community has been asking for new facilities for a number of years.
"We've got ODI status on our (home) ground and our facilities now but the missing link, and we always knew that, was facilities for hard-ball cricket," he said.
"We do 195-200 thousand plastic kids and boys (cricket), women and men across the schools but only five to six thousand of that 200,000 go on to hard-ball cricket because of the facilities.
"Now we estimate by the time we finish this project - which is a two year project because we're going up into the Highlands and logistically we have to make sure the wickets get up there and the concrete is poured - by 2020 we will have 40,000 hard-ball cricketers playing up from five or six thousand."
It's hoped a boost in playing numbers will help to develop more future PNG internationals. Photo: PNG Cricket
Greg Campbell said money from the World Cup fund had been sitting largely untouched for three years and was proving hard to tap into.
But after discussing the dwindling facilities in Port Moresby with the Australian High Commissioner to PNG, Bruce Davis, Campbell said His Excellency managed to convince the Australian Government to donate $US200,000 towards the project.
Greg Campbell said for most villages the new pitches will be a substantial upgrade on what's currently on offer, while in places like the Highlands they will be introducing organised cricket for the first time.
"The wickets will be laid properly to specifications and they'll have synthetic grass stuck on them so they can be used all-year round," he said.
"At the moment if you go out to these grounds that have had wickets for 30/40 years they're just bare concrete, the concrete's chipped away, they don't have any matting so you can't explain how much of an explosion of cricket we'll have in the next three, four years in this country."
Cricket PNG's home ground is Amini Park in Port Moresby.
"The villages are really excited," enthused Campbell, who said the work will begin immediately.
"We'll actually start building five of these pitches in Moresby in the next couple of weeks through a contractor - the University of PNG has given us the ok to put two wickets on their two grounds, which is huge.
"The local ground down in the harbour near the Hanuabada village, that wicket will be replaced at Konedobu, we're doing (one) in Pari village, we're putting a wicket in in Sir John Guise Stadium and one of the private schools here we're putting a wicket in - that's just in the next month.
"All the synthetic grass is on its way - over 50 rolls - then we'll start going out through Central (Province)...a two or three hours drive but that's where most of our boys original villages come from and that's where a lot of the cricket is played.
"So we will go an put 11 wickets out through there that means 11 of them villages can play cricket non-stop to their hearts content then we will actually go out to our own associations and up into the Highlands where cricket is not played yet."
Cricket PNG Chair Helen Macindoe believes this is arguably the biggest infrastructure project that Cricket PNG have been involved in since their formation 1973.
"Last year we were able to upgrade the Amini Park facilities but this project will help with the development of cricket nation-wide, in line with our vision to be PNG's favourite family sport," she said.
Construction on the 'Cricket Facilities Enhancement Project' will begin immediately in the National Capital District with the first pitches expected to be ready for communities in the second half of the year.
