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Cricket match on Kwato Island near Samarai ca. 1905

from State Library of Queensland

• Vesna Verencevic said:

  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...

• Vesna Verencevic said:

  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