![Hannah Darlington believes the Indigenous Pathway Program is about more than cricket. Picture by Carla Freedman Hannah Darlington believes the Indigenous Pathway Program is about more than cricket. Picture by Carla Freedman](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/lachlan.harper/44eaa5ae-e219-4bbb-9ef8-9fb5124e9ea6.JPG/r0_844_8256_5504_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
At the start of Cricket NSW's inaugural Indigenous Cricket Pathway Program at Wade Park on Thursday (February 9), students from schools across the Central West sat in their own groups.
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By the end they all became one, joined together by culture and cricket.
It was a wholesome sight to see for NSW Breakers bowler Hannah Darlington, who ran various students through drills and a question and answer segment as part of the program.
"It's pretty special anytime we get to do this anywhere, coming out to a country town sort of makes it more special," she said.
"There's kids that have definitely done more work than I have to get here, I've heard stories of two to three hour bus trips.
"It's been really exciting to see these kids excited to pick up a cricket bat and ball after such a long trip here and then on top of that the culture and connection.
"We saw the schools segregated at the start of the day now they're in there playing cricket, it's their lunch break and they still haven't put everything down."
The free program, open to youngsters aged 12 to 18, brought well over 50 cricketers from around the region to Wade Park.
It included an introduction to noongar wan a, a ball hitting game played by First Nations people in the south-west region of Western Australia.
Darlington said some of the biggest rewards that come from this program aren't restricted to the cricket field.
"When we did the q and a I spoke about when we get these opportunities to play in an Indigenous team it's so much more than cricket itself," she said.
"There's times where we've been up to Alice Springs and I haven't spoken about cricket at all. We've sat down and had a yarn about whatever we're talking about in that present moment, and I think those sort of moments you think about more than whatever happens on the cricket field."
The Sydney Thunder captain added much of the questions from students comes from the path they chose to reach cricket stardom.
"We had one girl probably ask about six questions in a row, there's some of the simple ones about how did you know cricket was going to be a career? When did you switch in terms of wanting to make it as a career?," she said.
"We often get asked if we played a number of different sports and I think that's the case with a lot of people if they've grown up playing a lot of different sports. For me it was netball and cricket and we have some soccer players too."
Darlington added the program provides an insight into the pathway junior cricketers can have to playing the sport or even following it.
"They probably forget sometimes that cricket's a career now, it's something I didn't know till I was 13 or 14 but they're around the age now where I wanted them to know that cricket's pretty accessible in terms of it can be on the television screen at multiple times of the day, pretty much most days of the year," she said.
"It's pretty exciting that most players that are playing here this weekend they can then watch on their television screen for years to come and hopefully have that drive whether it's to be a player or cricket fan of these players."
![Parkes gun Maddy Spence was also part of the program. Picture by Carla Freedman Parkes gun Maddy Spence was also part of the program. Picture by Carla Freedman](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/lachlan.harper/3f6e92fe-6a24-4ecb-a142-1adf0dde6f9f.JPG/r0_422_8256_5082_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Parkes' Maddy Spence, who travels to Sydney every weekend to play for Penrith Cricket Club, was also part of the program and re-enforced the importance of country cricketers having access to some of the state's best.
"I'm just here to be around the girls and mentor some girls that haven't played before and haven't had the opportunities," she said.
"I feel like you see them on the big screen it looks a bit slower than what it is in real life .. it's just great to see how the girls play (in person)."
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