Cricinfo to revamp before the World Cup

Sorry, I still can't bring myself to call it ESPNcricinfo - it's like the ICC's desperate attempts to call the UDRS the DRS to take the word umpire out, but in reverse forcing us to remember the ESPN brand every time we go to Cricinfo. Either way, the site is apparently going to be revamped before the World Cup and as someone who works in that area I'll be interested to see the results. The last time the site was updated when ESPN bought Cricinfo, I wrote a brief review of the site, which was balanced rather than 100% complimentary - I doubt I'll be asked again!

What Tom Gleeson made clear a while back was that Cricinfo's mobile traffic is increasing substantially, and that's no surprise. Mobile visitors are going up for most sites but I wonder how many of the quoted 129m page views are people like me who type in the URL on a mobile and then go straight to the bottom of the page to click on the "full site" link. And then how many of the page views are people going back to the homepage as part of their mobile browsing and having to do the same thing multiple times, scrolling down to the full site link. For me, as someone who reads a lot of the Cricinfo content, their mobile site gets in the way of me browsing the full site via my iPhone.

As more and more smart phones are sold and used commonly, I have my doubts whether sites like Cricinfo, that aren't transactional, need a separate mobile site. If they feel they do, the world will be full if people like myself, treating the mobile site as an obstacle to get round rather than what it was designed for - to give easy access to content for those on a mobile rather than a computer. Time will tell if that prediction on the evolution of mobile web content works out....I'll come back to you in 2016 if I remember!

England preparation to smooth?

An interesting piece from Duncan Fletcher about how things couldn't look any better for England going into next week's 1st Ashes Test (although they could have finished the job against Australia A having got them 66-5). And for yet more discussion about how the two teams are preparing and their various issues, listen to Cricinfo's Switch Hit....

Big balls

This piece on Cricinfo entitled "Australia's Ashes plans get serious" made me laugh. Justin Langer has declared that "It's going to be about who has the biggest balls" so let's hope England are well endowed!

Elsewhere in the article it also mentions that England are "the most confident of a win in Australia since the last time, when they were beaten 5-0".

The most confident they've been since the last tour....that must be very confident then!

Cricket wickets and WG Grace

The lifeless pitch used for the 2nd Test in Sri Lanka when they played India recently seems to have meant that the lot of the hapless bowler is once again in focus. Bigger bats, smaller boundaries, only able to bowl a certain amount of bouncers, anything down the leg-side a wide in ODIs...the list goes on. But a wicket where batsmen on both sides dominate delivers (relatively) boring cricket - a wicket that does a little more than is ideal provides an exciting game (and a result).

As Boards are desparate to increase the attendence at Tests, I see it as their responsibility to talk to their groundsmen and ensure wickets with a bit of life are produced. Unlike this observer who maligns the state of wickets around the world these days, I (for once) don't think it's the ICC's core role to worry about wickets - if the main players in the national boards can't see why it's vital for them to worry about, then they shouldn't be in those positions.

Watching the Legends of Cricket videos about WG Grace on Cricinfo the other day, the experts talking about Grace's skill were at pains to point out that his statistical record has to be considered against the poor standard of wickets he played on. In fact, he claimed to have had to educate Australian groundsman on how to prepare a decent wicket during his tours there! Perhaps we could double his Test average of 32 in today's run currency as a minimum?

21 consecutive maidens?!?

The latest list on Cricinfo looks at those bowlers who are relatively expensive but have very good strike rates. Very interesting though the whole piece is, the thing that somehow caught my attention the most was that one bowler bowled 21 consecutive maidens in a 1964 Test v England - his name was Bapu Nadkarni. That particular effort saw him return figures if 32-27-5-0, and he also boasts a couple of other immensely economical spells against Pakistan in 1961: 32-24-23-0 and 34-24-24-1.

Sadly one-day cricket didn't exist at the time - Nadkarni would have been an ODI legend!

IPL stats

For those of you following it, here's the Cricinfo IPL stat summary of how teams have fared over by over in the IPL. For me, it's finally some meaningful cricket following weeks of reading about relatively meaningless group games. Pity the bit that really matters is so short, and the group stages seem to go on for an eternity.

Yesterday I wanted to try and catch a bit of the semi on YouTube. It's not quite as simple as typing in YouTube.com and searching for IPL it seems!

Broad, Swann and Anderson - a quality tail

I recently wrote about how England should be able to feel comfortable with their batting line up given that they're playing 7 batsmen and 2 allrounders. Of course they were soon bowled out twice for less than 200!

But Cricinfo's numbers game has presented the stats the demonstrate just how strong England's tail has become, especially compared to their recent history. On top of 9 batsmen or allrounders, Anderson has averaged nearly 17 since the start of 2008, and Onions averages 32 balls for each of his dismissals. (When Sidebottom came in for the 4th Test v South Africa, I somehow didn't feel comfortable with Anderson losing his number 10 spot and now there's some statistical justification for that - that average of nearly 17 in the last 2 years is superior to Sidebottom's career batting average).

Oh dear Cricinfo!

An entirely predictable headline on Cricinfo!

Cricinfo poll results....

Following Ben's post, Cricinfo have run a poll on the issue of moving The Ashes back to terrestrial TV in England - the results are pretty conclusive!

Mitchell Johnson - not that good

Having seen him spray the ball around Steve Harmison style during The Ashes, England supporters, as a general rule, were non-plussed by the fact that Mitchell Johnson won the ICC Player of the year award. It seems that it isn't just Englishmen though, judging from the latest numbers on Cricinfo's poll at the bottom of their homepage. I also voted for the bottom of the three options.

Very short Cricinfo site review

This very short piece appears in the current issue of Marketing. I can't believe they omitted the mention of Cricket Burble despite the fact that I made sure it was in there!!

A near impossible selection decision

Cricinfo are currently asking you to vote for the two openers you would select in an all-time England XI. It's made more tricky given the fact that no-one has watched all the players bat, but I think of myself as a half-decent student of the game and I found it near impossible. Whatever combination you go with, you leave out one truly great player (as I believe there are 3 that stand above the rest in this list from Cricinfo).

Who would you pick?

Declaring and losing

As England weren't able to level the (rediculously short) Test series in India in the 2nd Test, inevitably focus moves to how on earth they lost the 1st Test. This interesting article on Cricinfo looks at the times when a team has lost after a declaration. A couple of comments on the article:

"The most recent match in which a team declared their first innings and lost was the Adelaide Test during the 2006-07 Ashes. England reached a seemingly impregnable 551 for 6 in the first innings before declaring. Only twice had teams lost after posting higher first-innings scores, so their decision was justified. England gained a slender lead but a third-innings meltdown left Australia with only 168 to chase, a target they achieved with six wickets in hand. England's first-innings effort was also the fourth-highest losing total in any innings and the second highest declaration in a defeat."

I've got to totally disagree with that! As I was saying to anyone willing to listen at the time, England's only chance of winning was Australia following on. So in effect England only asked them to score 352 and on that wicket, that was a synch.

The other thing that I noticed in this article was the brilliant name of an old England player - Jack Crapp. Yes, I know, I still have the sense of humour of a 4 year-old!

Cricket books to last through to the summer

It's the time of year to buy some cricket books for your friends and family should they be keen, or to make some less than subtle hints should you be. So good timing then for this list of the top 45 cricket books from Cricinfo.

You'll see a selection on the right of this page, just click through to buy from Amazon.

Hong Kong boundaries

It appears that Graham Wagg agrees with John Wright's recent comments about the size of the boundaries in Hong Kong judging from his comments on Quote Unquote on Cricinfo!

"I think my little boy, Brayden, would have a chance of hitting a six out there next year and he's only eight weeks old."

Comments on the referrals system

Readers of Cricket Burble won't be surprised to see my comments on Cricinfo here. What's annoying is that they edited out my link to Cricket Burble wrong decisions!

Quote unquote

You may or may not be a reader of Cricinfo's "quote unquote" but if you'd like to take a look click here.

My top 3 are:

"In terms of sporting endeavour and prestige, the IPL is to cricket what diarrhoea is to dodgy curry houses - an unfortunate by-product." Paul Lewis, in the New Zealand Herald, clearly doesn't care much about developments in India.

"I've seen him spray it worse than that, so I'd suggest it was quite a good start for him." Michael Vaughan on Steve Harmison after his fast bowler opened his New Zealand tour with four wides and two sets of four byes.

"I think Hawk-Eye must have had a late night." Ian Botham explains why a ball he thought was going "way down" was shown hitting leg stump by Hawk-Eye.

Cricinfo bought by ESPN

This is the press release - I'm not entirely sure what my feelings are on this at the moment...will think about it and then post again!

ESPN and The Wisden Group today announced that they had agreed to terms for ESPN’s acquisition of Cricinfo, the world’s leading cricket website.

“Growing our business in the on-line world is vital for us to serve sports fans," said Russell Wolff, managing director of ESPN International. “Cricinfo is a tremendous property with a great fan base and it will be a strong addition to ESPN.”

Lynne Frank, managing director of ESPN, Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: “Cricket has a huge worldwide following and Cricinfo has created a great product for cricket fans everywhere. The acquisition complements our growing online business and underlines the fact that ESPN is committed to serving a diverse fan base. We are delighted that Cricinfo has joined the ESPN family.”

The acquisition of Cricinfo enhances ESPN’s on-line portfolio, which includes ESPN.com - the U.S.’s premier online sports destination; ESPNdeportes.com - the number one Spanish-language sports website among Spanish-preferred fans in the U.S. and ESPNsoccernet.com - the world’s leading English-language football website.

Cricket lends itself perfectly to online coverage: the length of matches and the statistics-rich nature of the game combine to drive high global usage and build loyalty.

Wisden Group director Mark Getty, said: “Cricinfo has developed into a significant cricket brand in its own right, combining huge global popularity with strong commercial success. ESPN is a major sports broadcaster and international rights holder and will provide the perfect environment for Cricinfo to further realise its enormous potential. The Wisden Group will continue to focus on its Hawk-Eye sports technology business in cricket, tennis and a growing range of other sports.”

And Tom Gleeson, Managing Director of Cricinfo, added, “We have had a strong working relationship with ESPN for a number of years and we know how successful they are in providing innovative online sports content. We look forward to working with the ESPN team and drawing on its expertise in sports marketing and digital media.”

ESPN’s digital media initiatives combine to deliver an industry-leading combination of live and on-demand sports events; up-to-the-minute sports news and information; scores, statistics and analysis; extensive on-demand and downloadable video and audio programming; fantasy sports, and video games across Web, mobile and other non-linear platforms.

ESPN Digital media properties are leading sports destinations: online- (ESPN.com); mobile (wireless Web sports site mobile.espn.com); radio ( the most listened-to online sports radio destination ESPNRadio.com); the leading English-language Soccer news and information site (ESPNsoccernet.com); leading fantasy games that are played by millions of fans each year; one of the most successful premium content services on the Web (ESPN Insider); the most downloaded sports content on the iTunes Store, and a one-of-a-kind in-game content integration platform appearing in many of the most popular sports video games.