Hunt is the sister of the former Australian stars Alex and Kate Blackwell, but has taken up the game in part to show her daughters that it is never too late to try something new.

“I feel like you’re part of the community,” she said. “As a parent and now involved and playing, my main crux is that it’s been important to show Abi and Sophia that it’s never too late to pick up new interests and skills, and cricket really feels like a game for everyone.

“Club cricket is accessible, it shouldn’t seem daunting or something you can’t get involved in even if you haven’t played it before.”

Nevertheless, Hunt agreed that the addition of a transitional format after the fashion of beach or tape-ball cricket would make the game still more inclusive at a time when teenagers have so many options in front of them.

“Abi and I had a go at indoor cricket as a fill-in and that’s another alternative, but it’s quite a quick game, so a transition in terms of beach or softer-ball cricket makes sense,” she said. “For Abi, she’s been under 13s with a softer ball, she moves to under 15s with a harder ball, had she not been playing the last couple of years that might’ve been a bit more daunting.”

Asked about the “Matildas effect” of the women’s soccer team at the front of the national consciousness through hosting the World Cup last year, Allsopp pointed to near 100 per cent growth in the number of women playing cricket in Australia since nearly 87,000 spectators packed the MCG for the 2020 T20 Cup final.

But he added that cricket could learn from the Matildas in terms of the storytelling around players and the halo effect of world events. This year’s World Cup has been moved from Bangladesh to the UAE and then the 2026 event will be hosted by England. The next cup up for grabs is in 2028.

“We’ve got arguably one of the greatest women’s sporting teams ever on the planet and we’ve almost taken that for granted,” Allsopp said.

“We saw with the Women’s World Cup in 2020, despite COVID shutting down the world, we’ve since experienced 100 per cent growth in girls coming through since that time. So even though it had an impact on what we can do with programs after, the inspiration provided to those young girls is something you can’t really put a price on.

“The other day I asked a couple of young boys who are your favourite players, and they were rattling off Ellyse Perry or Ash Gardner. That’s quite extraordinary – if you asked a boy the same question 10 years ago who your favourite cricketer was, I don’t think you’d have heard that.”

Allsopp presented state by state “scorecards” to CA’s state association owners in recent weeks, which outlined some wildly divergent year-on-year results in different parts of the country.

What is uniform across all parts of Australian cricket, however, is the need to get children interested in the game at a young age. Only 10 per cent of all participants get involved after the age of 12.