Most cricket bats and balls lie dormant during the biting winter in New South Wales' Snowy Mountains. But that is not the case for a group of dedicated cricket teams who continue playing in the cold off-season in Cooma. "Even when it was minus three, minus four [degrees Celsius] you could walk past one of the ovals in town and they were playing cricket," said the president of the Monaro District Cricket Association, Nathan Thompson. The source of that "infectious" enthusiasm can be found in the roots of the alpine region's newest team, made up of mostly Indian and Pakistani cricketers. 'Crazy about cricket' Captain of the Cooma Titans and club president Mirza "Zee" Zeeshan said he is "crazy about cricket", but that was completely normal in his birth country of Pakistan. "It's enormous. Everybody loves cricket," he said. During his first week living in the Cooma area Mr Zeeshan's passion for cricket was reinvigorated when he watched a local game being played. "It wakes up a lot of things from the past," he said. Alongside hundreds of other migrant worker families Mr Zeeshan and his family moved to the Snowy Mountains to work for Snowy 2.0, the project expanding the Snowy Hydro scheme. There are currently 45 cultural backgrounds represented in the Snowy 2.0 workforce. "People are coming from around the world and that's why we have a lot of players registered here," he said. Reinventing cricket's 'great times' According to Nathan Thompson, prior to the Cooma Titans fielding junior and senior sides this season it had been decades since a new team joined the ranks. "When you chat to past players you hear of these great times in the 1960s and 1970s where all towns, villages, and localities had teams. Unfortunately that's not the case at the moment," he said. Seven new cricket clubs, including the Cooma Titans, formed in NSW this season according to Cricket NSW. The 2023/'24 Cricket Australia census acknowledged the "challenges all sports now face in ensuring participants continue to play sport for longer", and said it had "made retention initiatives a major priority". "To get an extra team in the competition is quite unusual in country areas," Mr Thompson said. Mr Thompson said the senior side was "excellent" and had become "hard to beat". "They play a very attacking style," Mr Thompson said. "Some of their batters are very big hitters and they can hit the ball a long way." "Their families come down and watch. They've probably got one of the larger, if not the largest supporter base in the competition." Community in full swing Cricketer Aqib Abbasi had been with other teams in the league for years and helped form the Cooma Titans last year. The local competition has helped the tight-knit team find a sense of community in the town that is often frequented by workers who only stay a few years for the Snowy scheme. "We are all friends and our families know each other," Mr Abbasi said. "There's not much to do [in Cooma] but if you're playing a sport that connects you to living here … that makes you more comfortable." Mirza Zeeshan, who was on a path to play professionally when he was younger in Pakistan, echoed those sentiments. "Every town you visit [for matches] and you start to talk with people you start to learn. It's amazing,' he said. And while they are in their early days, Mr Zeeshan had high hopes for the future of the Cooma Titans team and country cricket. "And I hope we come out on top this season."