Papua New Guineans have been playing cricket since it was introduced by missionaries in the late 1800s, but now they are taking their game to the next level, write Adam Cassidy and Barrie Cassidy.

The main road through Hanuabada village on the outskirts of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea is really the only open space among the thousands of wooden huts with their rusted iron roofs. Down by the water, the houses are built on stilts and reach a hundred metres out into the ocean, separated by planks of wood forming wobbly walkways. Once on shore, the village soon rises into the nearby hills, where homes are reached by narrow pathways.

So it stands to reason that cricket must be played right there in the middle of the main street. After all, with its rock-hard clay surface, it makes an ideal year-round pitch. The bounce is even and the outfield fast: very fast.

Former national captain Rarua Dikana still plays regularly in the village, always to a hero's welcome. "Cricket," he says, "is a way of life here. The kids love it when me and some of the others from national teams go home and join in a game. We always play on the main road and just ignore the cars."

The cars, too, usually ignore the players, creeping to the edges of the wide expanse and cruising by without disturbing the game.

This random yet central location is where many of the Papua New Guinea's national team, the Barramundis, have honed their skills for decades. These new cricket stars are not the product of an English village green or a sunbaked sporting ground in Australia, but a single coastal village with a pitch on the main street.

The Barramundis are ranked inside the world top 20 in limited-over cricket, and are steadily building on that ranking year after year. More than half the team comes from Hanuabada - a remarkable return for a village of 15,000 people. It is hard to imagine anywhere else in the world where the genesis of a national team of any kind was concentrated in a single district.

The players can't remember when it was any other way. Cricket has been played in the village since missionaries introduced the game in late 1800s. Hanuabada then became the birthplace of a localised version of the game for juniors - Lil Lik Kriket - and it was from that innovation that the game really blossomed. Jack Vare says Hanuabada produces national champions because coastal people are more skilful and athletic than those in the highlands, who tend to do better in sports that demand strength and aggression.

Locals play a game of beach cricket in Papua New Guinea.

Everyday scenes in the village would not be out of place in cricket-obsessed India. Some parents start walking their children to Hanuabada at 5.30 in the morning to join in an organised competition starting at 6.30am. Many kids arrive by canoe. Before land transport improved, in the 1950s and '60s, some groups travelled more than a day and a half from the village of Hula, 100 kilometres away. Hula too provides representatives in the national team, despite its small population. The tiny islands offshore, where cricket was introduced as an alternative to tribal fighting, provide teams as well.

As many as 50 teams line up to play in one of the three matches each day. Several matches are played at once in the tight confines of the main road. Well-struck pull shots often have fielders plunging into the ocean to retrieve the ball. Some kids use plastic bats and stumps, but others still make do with planks of wood and softdrink crates. Spectators sit on concrete blocks and wooden boxes at the edge of the road and chase the ball for the players when they belt it over or through the surrounding huts. National vice-captain and wicketkeeper Jack Vare says the umpires have a lot of discretion when calling the runs. If you hit a house and cause damage, it can be ruled out, but if you manage to clear it, then it's a six without question.

Further down the road, in the capital, Port Moresby facilities and skills are improving rapidly at the game's headquarters, Amini Park.

Building the game, however, has been difficult.

With a population of 250,000, Port Moresby is rated as one of the 10 most dangerous cities on the planet.

It is against this background that local authorities have had to entice top-level administrators and coaches from Australia and New Zealand to take the competition to the next level.

In May 2009, however, Cricket PNG did manage to persuade Australian Bill Leane to take up the challenge as CEO. Leane had read the official warnings, but nothing prepared him for the apparently simple challenge of setting up a half-decent cricket field.

A boy is taught correct bowling technique during training.

He was immediately taken to Amini Park - two grounds side by side with hard cement wickets and a third oval used mainly for Australian Rules football. The two pitches lay hidden among metre-high snake-infested grass. As well, 40 squatters had taken over, 15 of them living in the toilet block, just a few metres from what was supposed to be Leane's office. When he had some scrub removed from near the maintenance shed, he discovered another 20 squatters.

After a protracted period of negotiation, threats, legal action and the eventual rounding up of a 'force' of civilian vigilantes - known to Leane as 'groundsmen' - the squatters were finally cleared.

Then it was time to work on the ovals.

The Australian Rules ground was cleared of grass, but that only served to attract an unofficial driving school for minibuses, trucks, taxis and cars. The drivers refused to go, so Leane had one of his sponsors bulldoze a 2-metre moat around the perimeter. In the first day or two, the occasional vehicle crashed into the moat, and eventually the futility of it all dawned on the intruders and the problem was solved ... until the locals decided to drive their cars on the freshly cleared second oval, where as many as a hundred people would gather to drink. One Friday afternoon, a brawl broke out and about 400 people fought each other with sticks and tree branches.

Once again, the bulldozers were called in and a second moat was built. For good measure, Leane established a single entrance to the complex and employed permanent security guards.

And that was the strange beginning of the rapid rise in popularity of the great game of cricket in Port Moresby.

First under Leane, and then under new CEO Greg Campbell, Amini Park was transformed from scrub into one of the best facilities in the developing world. It now has two grounds with multiple turf wickets, an indoor training facility and secure administration. When Leane first arrived, Cricket PNG employed eight staff, all based in Port Moresby. Within two years, that number had grown to 70, and six regional offices had opened up.

Make-shift cricket equipment is often used in Papua New Guinea.

Coaching stocks were boosted with contributions from the likes of Australian and Queensland fast bowler Andy Bichel, test spin bowler Brad Hogg and former Queensland and South Australian player Peter Anderson. Former English wicketkeeper Geraint Jones, who was born in Papua New Guinea, returned after an extended period playing internationally, adding valuable experience to the national team.

The senior team went from strength to strength as some of the nation's best players spent six months at a time developing their skills in Australia and further afield, in Europe. Jack Vare for example, had summer cricket scholarships in Australia to play district cricket, and then a winter scholarship to study administration in Melbourne.

The biggest breakthrough came in 2013 under Campbell's leadership, when he successfully arranged for Papua New Guinea to join the South Australian Premier League, along with the Northern Territory. Papua New Guinean players also travel regularly to Sri Lanka to play against a combination of first-class players and development squads.

The junior program began in 2010. Within three years, 150,000 juniors had signed on in 10 provinces and now there is an aggressive push to boost the sport into schools. The under-19 team has rapidly improved and now ranks 12th in the world, and was grouped with India, the West Indies and Zimbabwe in a World Cup.

Notwithstanding crime, snakes and squatters, the rise of organised cricket in Papua New Guinea is an international success story. Throughout its growing success, the disproportionate representation from Hanuabada has remained a constant. The village of Hanuabada may not be the birthplace of cricket, but it is surely the soul.

This is an edited extract from An Ocean Of Cricket by Adam Cassidy and Barrie Cassidy (Victory Books), available now at Melbourne University Publishing and all good bookstores.

Adam Cassidy works for the International Cricket Council with a brief to promote the game in the East Asia-Pacific region. View his full profile here. Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of ABC programs Insiders and Offsiders. View his full profile here.