Cricket NT’s plan to be Australia’s winter home of cricket

In the space of 12 months, NT Cricket has increased commercial revenue by 160 per cent and signed landmark playing and training agreements with professional interstate teams. Now it has a bigger plan

NT Cricket cheif executive officer Joel Morrison said the turnaround in fortunes for local cricket, occurring despite the NT’s worst economic conditions since self-government. Picture: Keri Megelus

WORLD-CLASS players, expanding competitions and limitless opportunities for young boys and girls — that’s the current story of local cricket.

And after a brutal 12 months of economic recession, it’s one of the best stories in all of the Territory.

One year ago, the game of cricket in the NT was in a state of uncertainty, it’s footing made all the more unsure due to the Territory’s intensifying economic headwinds.

“What we did was rebuild our culture, rebuilt our relationships with our cricket community, and became a lot more collaborative,” said NT Cricket CEO Joel Morrison, who took over the role in May 2018.

In the space of 12 months, NT Cricket — the NT’s peak cricketing body — increased commercial revenue by 160 per cent, signed landmark playing and training agreements with professional teams interstate, established the NT’s first high performance cricketing academy and developed a blueprint to make the Territory Australia’s winter cricket training hub.

“We think it shows that if you’ve got the right approach, you work hard, you have a team of good people, then even in the tightest economic climate you can still find people who are willing to invest in what you’re trying to build,” Morrison said.

NT Cricket’s biggest coup over the past year has been signing a deal to bring a professional cricketing team, the Hobart Hurricanes, to join the local NT Strike League — an exercise in lateral thinking that will see a world first with professionals taking on local amateurs.

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Cricket NT’s next big idea is even more ambitious: to become Australia’s winter playing and training hub.

“Our unique proposition is we play in winter,” Morrison said.

“The only place around the rest of the world that plays in the Australian winter is the UK, but it’s now extremely difficult to get a visa there if you’re not an elite professional effectively playing for Australia.

“So the only opportunity (Australian cricketers) have to play over winter is in Darwin. That’s a massive strategic point of difference for us.”

Morrison says the turnaround in fortunes for local cricket, occurring despite the NT’s worst economic conditions since self-government and off the back of the game’s national reckoning after Australian players were caught cheating in South Africa, has shown the Territory can succeed by embracing its differences and struggles.

“There has never been a better time to be in the Territory,” he said.

“Because when things are tough, that’s when people really dig in and you can achieve some amazing things.

“We’ve got the role models here in the NT that show you can actually go out and do it.”