Cricket was declared as the number 1 sport in Australia as per the latest National Cricket Census of the island nation based on participation. Apart from the ‘Baggy Greens’, the people of the country usually take a keen interest in following their national football team (widely known as the ‘Socceroos’) and also the Rugby team, but it seems the game played in the 22–yards has won the race to become the most popular sport. It was also revealed that nearly 1/4th of the cricketers in Australia are Female. School and Indoor participation also grew by 7.5% and 9.9% respectively. Women’s participation in the sport increased gradually due to the success of the Women’s Big Bash League.
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As per the reports of Cricket.com.au, CEO of Cricket Australia James Sutherland said, "Cricket is clearly the sport of choice for many Australians and we’re proud to be billed as one of the biggest participation sports in the country. As another exciting summer approaches, we continue to be focused on growing our sport and inspiring Australians from all walks of life to pick up a bat and ball and play cricket.”
“A record 1,311,184 people played cricket across Australia in 2015-16, an 8.5 per cent increase on 2014-15 – placing cricket at No.1 as the current top participation sport in Australia“, he added
The Australian Cricket board is quite happy about these numbers having witnessed record-breaking audiences last summer in their International as well as the domestic season. The first official Day/Night Test against New Zealand at the Adelaide Oval has also helped the cause to a great extent.
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The Big Bash League is a key crowd puller in the calendar year and has risen in popularity that ever before during the last season. "The Big Bash League rose to unprecedented levels of popularity in its fifth year, with an average audience of more than 1 million Australians tuning in to watch the tournament on Network TEN and a record breaking 1,030,495 people attending matches”, said Sutherland.
It was reported that almost 1.3 million fans had turned into the Nine Network for watching international Cricket, ODIs and T20 matches.
In an effort to increase the popularity of the game amongst females to a larger extent, Cricket Australia is about to make large investments in the grass root levels. Regarding the matter, the CA official said, "We’re committed to continuing to invest in the grass roots, as we have demonstrated with a $4 million commitment in launching a Growing Cricket for Girls fund.”
The Australian Men’s cricket team is currently touring Sri Lanka for a 3-match Test series along with 5 ODIs and 2 T20 Internationals.
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