How the web caught on to cricket
After seven weeks that, at times, have felt more like seven years, the Cricket World Cup is finally drawing to a close. So it’s time for some reflection on how the tournament has gone on the internet.
I think it’s fair to say that events of Sunday, March 18 made covering the 2007 Cricket World Cup a particular challenge. shocked everyone involved in the tournament. Players and spectators alike clearly found it difficult to focus on the cricket itself, when it was being played out to a backdrop of an investigation into the murder of one of the game’s leading coaches.
And the same applied to the media. Journalists and broadcasters are often accused of taking an amoral, some might even say callous, approach to their work – but in this instance those employed to cover the World Cup were deeply affected by what happened.
On our Test Match Special Blog my colleagues Paresh Soni and Alison Mitchell provided a glimpse into what the impact was for people working in Jamaica at the time. Elsewhere, Telegraph correspondent Mark Nicholas went on record to say that as a result of the murder.
But it was not abandoned. The show limped on and those of us in the media had a duty to continue our coverage. The tournament may have had an odd, detached feel to it from that point on – but still we screened the pictures, commentated on the action and provided the web updates that cricket fans demand.
Those working on the tournament back in the UK were similarly shocked. We may have been thousands of miles away from the events at the Pegasus Hotel, but believe me, we were not immune to the repercussions. The cricket team at the 91Èȱ¬ Sport website had spent months planning our coverage and, with the event coming straight off the back of the Ashes, it marked the culmination of a particularly frantic six months, dominated by long shifts and overnight rotas.
We had looked to take our coverage on from the last Cricket World Cup in , by innovating in a couple of key areas - interactivity and live coverage. Live is obviously where it matters for cricket fans and our text commentaries in 2007 are a big step on from 2003, as we've given a couple of our best writers, and , license to be creative and at the same time make the most of the 91Èȱ¬'s radio coverage by incorporating choice bon mots from Test Match Special. While the irreverent tone of these pieces might not be to everyone's taste, we've had a great deal of feedback and it's fair to say the positive reaction has far outweighed the negative. In fact judging by the steady flow of email praise, Messrs Dirs and Fordyce appear to be generating something of a cult following.
The second area of real advance has been around interactivity and I've been hugely encouraged by the reaction to our Test Match Special Blog, which showcases some of the 91Èȱ¬'s best cricketing journalism, from the TMS on-air team to web writers like Martin Gough and Paresh Soni.
But enough 91Èȱ¬ navel-gazing. As both a keen cricket fan and a student of online sport, I've been just as interested to see what other websites have been up to for the World Cup.
All over the web there have been signs of creativity in full flow. , the specialist cricket site, has offered its usual comprehensive service - with some added extras like their new , which is produced by the same company that provide our own . This is an ambitious attempt to provide ball-by-ball graphical representations of the action. From a purist's perspective it might not be perfect and there are times when the Shockwave images aren't quite consistent with the text description. But there are far worse ways to follow a cricket match than this and they deserve credit for trying something new.
Elsewhere, know a thing or two about live coverage and while their highly-regarded may not exactly be pushing the technological boundaries, they have a freshness and vibrancy which belies their Web 1.0 look and feel – and I know they command a large and very loyal audience.
If you're a fan of video over broadband, then have been providing highlights - as long as you're a subscriber to their Sky Anytime package. Their site also has a , but to be honest I've yet to see much evidence of genuine blogging on there. Give it time, I suppose...
There's been more blogging to be had over at , on their - which is named after the "notorious section of the MCG where the rowdiest fans congregate". There weren't too many rowdy fans congregating on the site when I looked – and I’d argue that the most impressive step forward The Telegraph has taken is probably around its multimedia provision, with audio analysis from the likes of Simon Hughes and video coverage of events like Flintoff's mea culpa news conference.
Indeed, The Telegraph is not the only newspaper to have ramped up its web presence for the CWC. Everywhere you look you can see old media operations making the mad dash to the new frontier of the internet. With print circulation falling, the papers are starting to act as 24/7 media providers and - at least in theory - are placing the web at the heart of their cricket services. The lines are increasingly becoming blurred as traditional broadcasters like ourselves and Sky provide more and more written journalism, at exactly the time that newspapers like and are beginning to market themselves as expert purveyors of audio-video content.
All this convergence on the web is fascinating for the media anorak, as the old certainties and traditions are rapidly destroyed by new technology and changing audience behaviour.
But it's also great news for the cricket fan. The days of having to sit in front of page 341 of Ceefax watching the scores tick over are gone - there are just so many different ways to follow the action now.
