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Cricket on the Net— Past Perfect, Future Tense!

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CIOL Bureau
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At this time last year, cricket was the hottest thing on the Internet. Today, cricketing dotcoms have plenty to squirm about. A look at the rise, fall and future of cricket on the World Wide Web.

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At first sight, cricket seems to be tailor-made for the Internet. The game has a passionate following in the most populous regions of the globe and is played around the year, unlike other sports.

It is, therefore, a little surprising that cricket was one of the last major world sports to take to the Net. CricInfo (www.cricket.org) which went online in the mid-nineties was the first major Web site on the game. Although it was followed by a few others — most notably, Khel (www.khel.com), The Pavilion (www.thepavilion.com.au), Cricketline (www.cricketline.com) and Cricket Unlimited (www.cricketunlimited.co.uk) — it would be fair to say that prior to 1999 cricket had not exactly made its presence felt online.

Most Web sites on the game at that time were largely statistical in nature (CricInfo and Khel) or were the offspring of media houses (Cricket Unlimited and Pavilion) who had a team of cricket writers at hand. Live cricket coverage was limited to text commentary or scoreboards that had to be refreshed at regular intervals to get the latest from the scene of action.

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The 1999-2000 season changed all that.

Boom Time!





The 1999 World Cup came at a time when the Internet was expanding in India with the arrival of private ISPs. Not surprisingly, a number of Web sites were launched exclusively for the event as corporates grasped the fact that a large number of people in the sub-continent would have access to the Internet. However, there was not much novelty on offer as far as cricket coverage was concerned with all Web sites looking to ape each other with auto-refreshing scorecards, player profiles and scraps of news.

Not surprisingly again, a number of Web sites decided to go off once the tournament concluded.

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The next stage of expansion of cricket Web sites came towards the end of 1999 as a number of venture capitalists poured money into Web sites that could cover the game. For the first time, Web sites that focused on the game of cricket rather than a single tournament rose to prominence. Among them were Cricketnext (www.cricketnext.com), ClickCricket (www.clickcricket.com), Total Cricket (www.total-cricket.com), CricLive(www.criclive.com), CricketNYou(www.cricketnyou.com), Yeh Hai Cricket (www.yehhaicricket.com), Zoomcricket (www.zoomcricket.com), Thatscricket (www.thatscricket.com), Go4cricket (www.go4cricket.com) and CricContest (www.criccontest.com).

A few of these Web sites had been around in the past but the infusion of venture capital enabled them to provide far more comprehensive coverage of the game. The advance of technology and better bandwidth saw live audio and video coming on to the Net. CricInfo, Total Cricket and Cricket Next were among the first sites to feature live video coverage on the Internet. Cricket sites now offered scores in a variety of ways, from HTML scorecards to Java ones, from score-tickers to special score pagers. Web sites suddenly had celebrity columns, exclusive reporting teams and a whole lot of interactive and gaming sections.

And Bust!





Sadly, it was too good to last.

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The second half of 2000 has seen many high-profile sites bite the dust. As I write today, Total Cricket has shut down its publication CricketTalk, Go4Cricket is rumored to be laying off people and ThatsCricket is reeling from the financial problems of its parent, India Info.

On the other hand, the traditional cricket Web sites such as CricInfo and Khel seem to be doing better than ever. CricInfo in particular has been going from strength to strength and has tied up with a number of national cricket boards to be their official cricket Web site, thus giving it invaluable access to live audio and video coverage. The site is also one of the few to have moved into e-commerce with a special site CricShop (www.cricshop.com) dedicated to selling cricket merchandise and memorabilia. The content of the site no longer depends on statistics but also features a number of celebrity authors and a full-fledged team of cricket correspondents. Among the newcomers, CricketNext seems to have gained appreciable publicity for its sponsoring of tournaments in Dhaka and England. With its attempts to sell cricket merchandise online, it seems set to challenge CricInfo in the long haul.

Not much is known about other Web sites except that they exist. Financial statements for most are non-existent and one has to rely on rumor and innuendo to find out what is happening. Many of them seem to be suffering from typical dotcom disease — great expectations and not enough innovation and substance to back them up. Most of the sites that failed did so because they did not present anything new to the user — it was the same scorecard, statistics and odd celebrity write-up.

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The Future: Challenging TV?





Cricket Web sites seem to be heading for a major shakeout in the new millennium where only the innovators can survive. Statistics, celebrity write-ups and live match coverage are no longer core competencies as they are accessible to most sites. The key, clearly, is going to be the presentation of these elements as well as the ability to translate cricket fans into effective online communities. Many of the sites seem to have caught on to the idea, and now, live coverage of matches is often interspersed with chats and online contests. CricInfo has even added a new dimension to its statistics section through its Stats Guru facility, which allows users to search its massive database for specific records or to make comparisons between different players and teams.

As far as technology is concerned, the onset of live video and audio will definitely add a new dimension to cricket online. However, it is doubtful whether cricket Web sites will ever compete with television for viewership even when broadband connectivity comes of age in the near future. The two media seem to address different audiences. Television is more for the homebodies while the Internet is better for those who wish to keep in touch with the game while at work. Having live video and audio in the workplace is just a mite too distracting. Therefore, it is more likely that text scoreboards and tickers will continue to have their audiences although their delivery might change — for instance, the use of Java scoreboards has ruled out the need to refresh pages.

As always, it will be the innovators who will survive on the Internet. Whoever it is, online cricket fans will have little reason for complaint in the coming days.

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