Australian Indoor Cricket has launched as the sport’s new national governing body, with Cameron Walter appointed inaugural chair and a board drawn from across the playing, coaching, and administrative ranks.
Australian indoor cricket has a national home of its own again. At the 2026 Hall of Fame and Presentation Dinner, the sport’s community was introduced to Australian Indoor Cricket, a newly established national governing body created to lead, grow, and protect the game.
Indoor cricket is a fast, eight-a-side form of the game played on an enclosed, netted court, where every player both bats and bowls and the surrounding nets are live as part of play. Australia has been the world’s dominant nation in the format for decades.
The announcement marks a turning point for a sport that has sat under Cricket Australia since 2009. Rising costs, insurance pressures, and the impact of Covid made indoor cricket more expensive to run for centre operators and more costly for participants, and within a national body stretched across the whole of cricket, the format was gradually set aside.
“Indoor cricket was always going to be a small format in a very large house,” Walter said. “A sport that is somebody’s afterthought cannot grow. And we are nobody’s afterthought.”
The inaugural board brings together experience from every level of the game. Its members are Hall of Famer and former Australian coach Ross Gregory; Australian Women’s coach and former Australian vice-captain Billy Floros; long-time indoor cricket administrator Briana Binch; long-time administrator and Australian Masters representative Jess O’Reilly; and Walter as chair.
Two board members bring experience from inside Cricket Australia, contributed voluntarily rather than as appointed delegates. “They are here because they chose to be, bringing hard-won experience to a new body of their own free will,” Walter said. “Their belief in this game outlasted the structure that once held it.”
A fixture of the indoor game for three decades, Walter has been a junior player, umpire, coordinator, centre manager, club president, coach, and team manager, and is widely known to the community as a commentator and MC. “Whatever I ask of this game, I have already asked it of myself,” he said.
The body has committed to consulting widely across players, officials, umpires, coaches, support staff, parents, fans, and centre owners, and to a model of national standards delivered through local decision-making. Within its first year it will publish a three-year strategy to grow participation at home and hold Australia’s position at the top of the world game.
Central to that plan is a call for the wider community to get involved. The board is inviting anyone with something to offer the game, whether time, expertise, professional skills, services, or connections, to step forward and contribute. “Our network is vast, and we have never leveraged it properly,” Walter said. “That changes now.” The board is also seeking further expertise in its own ranks and has opened expressions of interest for additional members.
Walter was candid that the transition would carry challenges. “I am not going to sell anyone a fairy tale. There will be short-term pain,” he said. “But everything this game needs to succeed is already in our community.” He committed to making himself personally available to everyone with a stake in the sport and provided his contact details to those attending the launch.
“Indoor cricket has always been a team sport,” Walter said. “Now, for the first time in a long time, we get to pick our own team.”
[Expressions of interest in board roles, offers of support, and general enquiries can be directed to: contact@indoorcricket.au]