ESPNcricinfo

ESPNcricinfo[4] (formerly known as Cricinfo[5] or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and StatsGuru, a database of historical matches and players from the 18th century to the present. As of March 2018, Sambit Bal was the editor.[6]

ESPNcricinfo
Screenshot
Type of site
Sports website
Available inEnglish
OwnerESPN
URLOfficial website
Alexa rank 1,147 (May 2020)[1]
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
Launched15 March 1993 (1993-03-15)[2][3]
Current statusActive

The site, originally conceived in a pre-World Wide Web form in 1993 by Simon King,[7] [8]was acquired in 2002 by the Wisden Group—publishers of several notable cricket magazines and the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. As part of an eventual breakup of the Wisden Group, it was sold to ESPN, jointly owned by The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Corporation, in 2007.

History

CricInfo was launched on 15 March 1993 by Simon King, a British researcher at the University of Minnesota and Badri Seshadri with help from students and researchers at universities around the world.[9][10]

The site was reliant on contributions from fans around the world who spent hours compiling electronic scorecards and contributing them to CricInfo's comprehensive archive, as well as keying in live scores from games around the world using CricInfo's scoring software, "dougie".[11][12] In 2000, Cricinfo's estimated worth was $150 million; however it faced difficulties the following year as a result of the dotcom crash.[13]

Cricinfo's significant growth in the 1990s made it an attractive site for investors during the peak of the dotcom boom, and in 2000 it received $37 million worth of Satyam Infoway Ltd. shares in exchange for a 25% stake in the company (a valuation of around £100 million). It used around $22m worth of the paper to pay off initial investors but only raised about £6 million by selling the remaining stock. While the site continued to attract more and more users and operated on a very low cost base, its income was not enough to support a peak staff of 130 in nine countries, forcing redundancies.

Cricinfo in 1995

By late 2002 the company was making a monthly operating profit and was one of very few independent sports sites to avoid collapse (such as Sports.com and Sportal). However, the business was still servicing a large loan. Cricinfo was eventually acquired by Paul Getty's Wisden Group, the publisher of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack and The Wisden Cricketer, and renamed Wisden Cricinfo. The Wisden brand (and its own wisden.com site) were eventually phased out in favor of Cricinfo for Wisden's online operations. In December 2005, Wisden re-launched its recently discontinued Wisden Asia Cricket magazine as Cricinfo Magazine, a magazine dedicated to coverage of Indian cricket. The magazine published its last issue in July 2007.

In 2006, revenue was reported to be £3m.[14]

In 2007, the Wisden Group began to be broken up and sold to other companies; BSkyB acquired The Wisden Cricketer, while Sony Corporation acquired the Hawk-Eye ball tracking system.[15] In June 2007, ESPN Inc. announced that it had acquired Cricinfo from the Wisden Group.[16] The acquisition was intended to help further expand Cricinfo by combining the site with ESPN's other web properties, including ESPN.com and ESPN Soccernet. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.[17]

As of 2018, Sambit Bal is the Editor-in-Chief of ESPNcricinfo.[18] In 2013, ESPNcricinfo.com celebrated its twentieth anniversary with a series of online features. The annual ESPNcricinfo Awards have also become an extremely popular event in the cricket calendar.

Popularity

ESPNcricinfo's popularity was further demonstrated on 24 February 2010, when the site could not handle the heavy traffic experienced after Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar broke the record for the highest individual male score in a One Day International match with 200*.[19][20]

Features

ESPNcricinfo contains various news, columns, blogs, videos and fantasy sports games. Among its most popular feature are its liveblogs of cricket matches, which includes a bevy of scorecard options, allowing readers to track such aspects of the game as wagon wheels and partnership breakdowns. For each match, the live scores are accompanied by a bulletin, which details the turning points of the match and some of the off-field events. The site also used to offer Cricinfo 3D, a feature which utilizes a match's scoring data to generate a 3D animated simulation of a live match.[21]

Regular columns on ESPNcricinfo include "All Today's Yesterdays", an "On this day" column focusing on historical cricket events, and "Quote Unquote", which features notable quotes from cricketers and cricket administrators. "Ask Steven" is a weekly column, published on Tuesdays, in which Steven Lynch answers users' questions on all things cricket. [22]

Among its most extensive features is StatsGuru, a database originally created by Travis Basevi, containing statistics on players, officials, teams, information about cricket boards, details of future tournaments, individual teams, and records. In May 2014, ESPNcricinfo launched CricIQ, an online test to challenge every fan’s cricket knowledge.[23]

The Cricket Monthly

The Cricket Monthly claims itself to be the world’s first digital-only cricket magazine.[24] The first issue was dated August 2014.[25]

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gollark: Unless you're video editing or something?
gollark: A PCIe 4 SSD is probably overkill.
gollark: There are simple programming languages where you can at least learn the syntax pretty trivially. But *natural* spoken languages are all horrible deranged messes which make no sense.
gollark: Did you check what the BIOS says about boot options or whatever?

References
  1. "Espncricinfo.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
  2. Shetty, Rachna. "Timeline | Cricinfo at 20 years". ESPN cricinfo. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
  3. "ESPNcricinfo at 20 years". ESPN Cricinfo. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
  4. "ESPNcricinfo / About Us". ESPN cricinfo. Retrieved 25 February 2017.
  5. "ESPN acquires Cricinfo". ESPN cricinfo (Press release). 11 June 2007.
  6. Sambit Bal at ESPNcricinfo. Accessed 2 June 2016
  7. "A bot called Cricinfo". 13 March 2018.
  8. "The CricInfo Story - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 31 July 2020.
  9. "11.5 Million, Not Out". business.outlookindia.com. 13 June 2009. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
  10. David Liverman. "Usenet announcement". Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  11. Vishal Misra (11 June 2013). "One night in 1996– Ball-by-ball text commentary, the core of ESPNcricinfo's offering, was born out of adversity during the sixth World Cup". ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 11 June 2013.
  12. Neeran Karnik (22 July 2008). "Ruminations of a Cricket Stalker: The good ol' days – live scorecards using 'dougie' and 'finger'". Cricket-stalker.blogspot.co.uk. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  13. Weaver, Paul (16 February 2006). "Cricinfo ups tempo on turning clicks into cash". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  14. Cricket: Cricinfo website makes plans for the future | Sport | The Guardian
  15. "Hawk-Eye ball-tracking firm bought by Sony". BBC News. 7 March 2011. Retrieved 7 March 2011.
  16. Business Standard (12 June 2007). "ESPN acquires Cricinfo.com". Business-standard.com. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  17. "ESPN acquires Cricinfo". Cricinfo. 11 June 2007. Retrieved 11 June 2007.
  18. "Sambit Bal | Author Index | ESPNcricinfo". Cricinfo. Retrieved 15 March 2018.
  19. Bal, Sambit. "Tendulkar breaks Cricinfo records". 'From the Editor' blog. ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 22 January 2012.
  20. Hoult, Nick (24 February 2010). "Sachin Tendulkar's 200 breaks ODI world record as India crush South Africa". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  21. "Live 3D Cricket at Cricinfo.com". The Next Web. Archived from the original on 30 August 2011. Retrieved 22 January 2012.
  22. Steven Lynch. "Ask Steven".
  23. "ESPNcricinfo launched CricIQ". The Hindu. 5 May 2014.
  24. "About us". The Cricket Monthly. ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  25. "Issues index". The Cricket Monthly. ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
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