The desperate move follows the town’s cricket community failing to respond to the three-member board’s announcement that they will stand down from their roles, which they have held for two years, before the start of the new cricket season.

Only a handful of people attended the association’s planned annual general meeting on Monday, forcing it to be abandoned.

One of the town’s four clubs, Mornington, had no one represented there.

The current board of president David Partridge, secretary David Callaghan and treasurer Troy Sands responded by issuing a “notice of a special meeting” in which they announced a revised AGM date of June 19.

They warned that if a new board was not elected “no cricket will be played in Gunnedah”.

Partridge described the AGM virtual no-show as “very disappointing”, especially given the clubs were told at the season-ending presentations the board was quitting.

He said it was “a bit of a worry, actually”.

“I feel with us stepping down there is a good chance if someone doesn’t step up Gunnedah cricket will go into recess for a year,” he said. “I don’t want to see that.”

Partridge said he and his fellow board members were physically and mentally spent after two seasons in the roles, with them also running Kookaburras at the same time.

He said they had done a successful job and would leave cricket in the town in good shape.

They took on positions no one else wanted and along with having “two real good years of cricket”, they had also raised money.

“We just feel it is time for some other club to step up and help out a bit,” he said.

“We’ve sort of neglected our own club the last two years because it’s a big job to run an association … the three of us want to have a break because it is non-stop work week in, week out, and we’ve all got young families ourselves and it just makes it very hard.”