Each summer, cricket administrators across Australia struggle with the problem of how to fill teams. "We have got to replenish a lot more players each year, because we’re losing the best ones to elite programs and the older ones retire," Gray says. "We get little support for recruitment and infrastructure, so the numbers keep going down. It’s a double-edged sword." In the neighbouring Charlestown Cricket Club, secretary Chris Oliver has been facing the same difficulties. "We have guys ringing to say they are not playing this year," Oliver says. "These are high-grade players dropping out of the game while a couple are moving to Sydney. We are bleeding every year, and it’s happening at all the other clubs in our area. "To fill up our numbers, we end up taking players from other competitions, but they also take players from ours, so it’s just circulation of numbers, not growth.

Loading "The other way is to get juniors to double up. We have a lot more 15-year-old kids playing in second and first grade… We spend so much time making the club work at a very basic level, we don’t get time to think about the bigger issue of how to stop the game declining." The clubs from the Newcastle region, a traditional cricket stronghold, routinely approach their state governing body, Cricket NSW, for help, but are frustrated by assurances that the game is growing. Cricket NSW’s manager of community cricket, Ivan Spyrdz, "came to us and drew a circle on a board with a dot in the middle," Gray recalls. "That dot was the 10 per cent of the population playing cricket. He drew a line through that and said that the strategy was to chase the 90 per cent who are not playing." "What that has led to is throwing aside the core and neglect of the game at club level. It would be much better hearing from our governing body on how they are going to solve the problem of decline, instead of them telling us how the game is growing based on these other numbers that are not actual competition cricket."

A recent letter from a regional cricket association chairman to Mr Spyrdz drew attention to recruitment problems and rising costs for cricketers and families. Cricket NSW had just appointed 34 new community positions which the chairman did not think addressed the problem. Millions of sponsor dollars from Woolworths, McDonald’s and Commonwealth Bank for grassroots cricket, he wrote, were not reaching the intended target. Mr Spyrdz replied that Cricket NSW’s data showed participation increasing, in contradiction of administrators’ experience, and suggested the problem was theirs. "If you are having communication issues, it appears that that may sit with you and those you are communicating with as there are many within your own cricket community … who appear to be across what is happening. I respectfully disagree we show no respect to volunteers we work with in the community." Mr Spyrdz told The Sun-Herald that there was a philosophical difference between organisations: "People are watching and sampling different kinds of cricket, and go to clubs to try to play those formats. Some clubs only offer traditional formats. We want to help clubs transition to making more offerings and in a sense being everything to everyone." Explainer: How we exposed Cricket Australia's double counting

Cricket NSW has increased its staff in the Newcastle region from one to eight in the past two years, and the total number of community officers from 36 to 86 this year. Aaron Gray says, "The current ratio of CNSW staff to club volunteers is conservatively 3:1. Ivan Spyrdz is happy to champion how much investment CNSW has made to assist participation numbers, yet these stats are not reflected in raw numbers of traditional Saturday formats of cricket." Loading On-the-ground administrators have numerous ideas to stop the drain on participation, such as earlier advertising for the new season, more financial assistance for players to buy equipment (an average adult grade cricketer needs to buy $1200 worth of gear, says Oliver), and more targeted funding for coaching and facilities. "We used to do a flyer for schools, which Cricket NSW said they would take over, but they didn’t," Oliver says. "Our entry-level teams dropped from five to two. It’s just basic stuff like that." Gray says that his club’s numbers in popular under-9 and under-10 Saturday formats fell dramatically four years ago when the governing body imposed its "T20 Blast" format, "which CNSW is saying has created so many new cricketers. It hasn’t for us. It lost so many from popular formats. Mid-week formats [such as the T20 Blast] are hard to get going because families have so many commitments and can’t get kids to games. It’s a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t fit our area." Spyrdz says he is aware of the crisis, saying "here’s no doubt that the last few years of community cricket have been tricky" – but differs on the solution. "We need to educate clubs to understand we’re working with them, not against them."

What club administrators don’t want to hear is continued assurances that the game is growing. "They say the AFL, soccer, everyone else pumps up their numbers the same way," says Gray. "But that is their commercial motives overshadowing what is the real problem."