Northern Territory Cricket chiefs watching Indigenous primary students from Malak, Ludmilla and Millner hover in large numbers around Marrara Cricket Ground last Tuesday earmarked where the growth of their sport is heading.

It's not quite a new strategy nor a new message, but it is somewhat unprecedented for one of Australia's peak cricket bodies to pinpoint that Indigenous children is the future of their game.

The number of Indigenous cricketers that have shot onto a national stage is startlingly small, and the number that have represented Australia is even less.

D'Arcy Short is the only Northern Territorian among them, with the 33-year-old representing his country eight times in one-day internationals and 23 times in T20 internationals.

But Northern Territory Cricket wants to bring on more D'Arcy Shorts into the game.

While the students were present ahead of the Indigenous round of the 2024 Supercars Championship for the Darwin Triple Crown, hovering around the Indigenous artwork amid the reveal of the vehicles livery, NT Cricket boss Gavin Dovey announced after combing the grounds one last time where he could visualise where NT cricket's future lied.

After running a series of cricket clinics across the three primary schools in the lead-up to one of the biggest sporting weeks on the annual Darwin calendar, Cricket NT hosted makeshift cricket games between the students at the Top End home of cricket.

"Today is all about connection and partnerships, and the great things that are possible when Communities come together, and people are given opportunity," Dovey said.

NT Cricket's vision says it's to unite and inspire Communities that will ensure cricket is a thriving sport for all faces of Territorians.

Not just in Darwin, but also across the outback club competitions in Alice Springs, in Katherine and in Tennant Creek.

While NT Cricket simultaneously runs the First Nations' Imparja Cup and National Indigenous Cricket Championships, it now promotes the unique Cricket 365 program that was launched back in 2021, as a national winter cricket concept, to showcase that the Territory is the only place that plays the game all year round.

It currently goes against the recent media narrative that Northern Territory are so crazy for Australian rules football only that it thoroughly deserves to be the AFL's 20th – and, possibly the final – team in the national competition as the only sport that matters.

NT Cricket is bringing a lineup to rival the Territory's three AFL matches each year.

"Our aim is to unite and inspire the Communities though cricket," Dovey said.

The Top End T20 Series that features Big Bash T20 franchises and a number of visiting international teams provides a highly visible and marketable platform to "share our vision of uniting and inspiring the Communities".

NT Cricket staff visit regional schools to run junior clinics, often tying them in with the open-age remote carnivals run by Indigenous organisers that provide local kids with fun, engaging sessions to promote a healthy and active lifestyle from cricket.

That recent initiative coming under the remote schools program has reached as far as Timber Creek, an isolated little township on the banks of the Victoria River on the way to the Western Australian border, full of Ngaliwurru and Nungali children that had in the past rarely been exposed to the game.

Borroloola is another location but in the opposite direction within 75 kilometres of the Gulf of Carpentaria and less than 300 kilometres from the Queensland border that serves mostly children from the Yanyuwa mob, who are seen playing with a hook on a line to fish more than playing a hook shot.

"Our Kids Cricket Clinic in Borroloola, NT, is all about happy faces, high fives, and the pure joy of the game," NT Cricket staff wrote on Instagram after its most recent visit.

Dovey said the clinics were important to "grow our sport first and foremost".

"I think any sporting body's primary purpose is to inspire a new generation of people who love and want to play the game," Dovey said.

"That's a pretty clear mission for us, but it doesn't happen unless you have got great partners (of NT Cricket) that want to collaborate and help achieve that.

"That's why I think for us being able to be a part of something where you've got some really unique people coming together to try and provide more opportunities for that next generation is just fantastic."