Papua New Guinea's cricketers have arrived in Darwin for the start of another South Australian Premier League campaign.
Earlier this month the Barramundis played three matches against the Tasmania, Western Australia and Queensland State teams in Brisbane.
Cricket PNG's High Performance Manager, Rarua Dikana, said the final few months of the year are an extremely busy period for the East Asia Pacific champions.
"That's the first time we've played any states sides and it was a good experience for the boys," he said.
"Our boys were bowled out cheaply against Tasmania and Queensland but they performed really well with both the bat and ball when Western Australia posted 322 runs for the boys to chase and the boys almost ran the runs down, after being bowled out for 307."
After a week back at home, the team has returned to Australia for the fourth edition of the SACA League, now known as the West End Redbacks League, and will spend the next month playing 50 over and two-day matches,
"The boys will be on the road up to the end of November so it's a big road ahead with the boys now involved in a lot of international cricket and quality cricket. Again it helps the development in the game of cricket and the programmes that we are putting forward for the boys is living the life of true professional cricketers," he said.
"The SACA League will be just a good lead-up for the boys coming into playing Namibia, which is a very important fixture for the boys as the World Cricket League and Intercontinental Cup matches are the ranking tournaments where the boys would love to play and do well in so that our ICC ranking is maintained at the highest possible number so that we maintain the high performance status and also the ODI status of our cricket."
The League, which features four teams from South Australia and one each from Papua New Guinea and Northern Territory, gets underway on Saturday.
The PNG Barramundis in training. Photo: Cricket PNG
