Cricket in Australia hasn't moved beyond its traditional Anglo base and has not found a following among migrants to Australia from non-cricketing nations such as Greece, Italy and Holland writes Andrew Stevenson in the Sydney Morning Herald.

CA anti-racism officer Peter Young describes growing beyond the Anglo base as "an absolutely critical issue for us; it's a scary issue. There was a time a generation ago when it was just taken for granted people would just play cricket."

Young estimates that a quarter of Australians were born outside cricket's embrace, and he recounts the experience of CA chief executive James Sutherland attending a cricket clinic in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern with his six-year-old son.

"They were all from one background - his own," said Young "He said it was scary, one of those wake-up moments."