Cricket ACT reveals vision for $10-$20 million centre of excellence in strategic plan for 2025

It can be revealed cricket officials are preparing to lobby the ACT government in the hope of securing funding for a project expected to cost $10-$20 million.

The proposed centre of excellence was a key element of Cricket ACT's three-year strategic plan, which was published on Thursday and highlighted a need to invest in juniors and female participation as well as developing a reconciliation action plan.

Chief executive Olivia Thornton said Cricket ACT was exploring location options, including an extension to the high-performance centre at Phillip Oval, for a venue that could be home to a Sheffield Shield, one-day domestic and women's professional team in the future.

The initial Phillip Oval redevelopment was finished in 2018 after was a joint $6.2 million initiative between cricket, the AFL and the government.

"One of the things we've spoken about quite openly is enhancing our offering to Australian cricket through having a Shield and [one-day team]," Thornton said.

"For us to be able to bring that to life, facilities and infrastructure to track along as well because it's far to say that we've outgrown Phillip.

"It's a great problem to have. It means our game is growing ... [the centre of excellence] is a longer-term piece of work and we'll come together at the right time to bring it to life.

"We don't have an abundance of choice for training facilities in Canberra and we're also thinking about that next level of cricket."

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The new centre of excellence would include indoor and outdoor wickets, as well as sports medicine and science facilities and recovery and rehabilitation space.

The ACT Brumbies and Canberra Raiders built new training facilities for $15 million $19 million respectively, while there are fears a Capital Football high-performance base at Throsby will blowout to $50 million.

Thornton said a new cricket base would serve elite and community players, as well as encouraging juniors to pursue cricket as a long-term career.

The strategic plans has honed in on the 5-12 age group as a key area of development to grow participation numbers.

"We've had 15 per cent growth year on year ... there are two things that keep kids in or out of the game. One is quality of coaching and the other is the quality of the infrastructure," Thornton said.

"If we haven't got kids into our game by the time they're 12 years old, we've only got a 10 per cent chance of them playing cricket.

"With that in mind, we know the importance of getting people back into cricket after two rough years.

"We need to look to female targeted programs, whether it's mentoring programs or father and daughters to Canberra. It's for us to think outside the box to see how we can attract more females to our game outside traditional channels."

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