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Cricket was introduced in Papua New Guinea (PNG) by missionaries from the London Missionaries Society in the early 1900s. Initially, matches were not always played with strict rules, with teams fielding over fifty players a common occurrence. The game became very popular among the Papuan coastal villages where these missionaries and early British explorers first landed. There is still conjecture about where the first game of cricket was played, with Milne Bay, Oro, and Hanuabada the three (3) most likely areas where the first cricket match was played on the shores of PNG. Source: www.icc-cricket.com/about/members/east-asia-pacific/assoc...

In the past, matches were not always played to strict rules, with teams of more than fifty players a common occurrence. Cricket did not arrive in the Territory of New Guinea until Australia took over the administration of the territory under a United Nations mandate. Cricket in rural areas tended to be played mostly by the indigenous population, whilst in urban areas such as Port Moresby the game was played mostly by the British and Australian expatriate population, and competition for clubs in the city was started in 1937. A team of nine expatriates and two indigenous players played in Papua New Guinea's first international, against Australia in 1972. Since its beginnings cricket was picked up naturally in the Motuan areas of Papua New Guinea, most recognizably the village of Hanuabada. Hanuabada village is located in the outer suburbs of Port Moresby, where cricket is played every day by small children to their national stars, every afternoon the streets are flooded with boys playing cricket, this was also where the Liklik Kricket Competition was started in PNG. It may be for these reasons more than half of the PNG national cricket team is from Hanuabada village. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea_national_cricket_team

In the 1850s, Chinese miners who flocked to the goldfields brought with them the bacterial disease, leprosy, which then quickly transferred to the Aborigines and South Sea Islanders who had little natural immunity to the disease. Today, the disease is known as Hansen’s Disease (after Armauer Hansen, a Norwegian who discovered the bacteria that cause it). Back then, the disease was believed to be highly contagious with no known cure; by the 1890s sufficient Europeans had also contracted the disease to force the government to pass the Leprosy Act of 1892. This made leprosy a notifiable disease and forced those who contracted the disease to be sent to designated lazarets, or leper colonies, for treatment isolated from the general community. And, because there was no known cure, such internment was probably going to be a lifetime sentence. By 1907, the inmates of Queensland’s several lazarets were all sent to a new one at Peel Island. Leprosy sufferers were often isolated from their families, with little, if any opportunity to say goodbye. When they arrived at the island they found themselves part of a multicultural community consisting of South Sea Islanders, Aborigines, Chinese, Europeans, and Queensland-born whites. There they were housed in four compounds: white males, white females, coloured males, and coloured females. During the day, patients were free to roam the island but had to return to their compounds at night. The coloureds shared galvanised iron huts, however, the whites fared slightly better, having a wooden cabin each. White women also had a wood stove and kitchen in their huts and were encouraged to cook for themselves. The men, though, dined in the communal dining hut. They weren’t formally ‘prisoners’, however, leprosy patients were not allowed to leave the island apart from being permitted to fish on the island’s reefs, and indeed fishing was one of their main forms of recreation. Other activities included cricket or tennis, billiards, reading, listening to the radio, gardening, and attending concerts and church services. Source: www.secretbrisbane.com.au/home/2017/3/20/the-lazaret-at-p...

The earliest evidence of cricket being played in Queensland is in 1857, two years prior to separation from New South Wales and statehood. A match between Brisbane and Ipswich was held in 1859 while in 1860 a Toowoomba team played Dalby. By 1862 there were also teams in Warwick, Maryborough, Gayndah, Gympie, Rockhampton, and the Lockyer Valley. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensland_cricket_team#:~:text=Fre....