Tech Talk: Not Out

• Share

Tuesday, Mar. 13, 2001 | Who said content doesn't sell on the Net?

Lots of people actually -- many of them are investors in online magazines like The Street.com and Salon.com, both of which have seen their share prices sink near out of existence. And when you have people like Rupert Murdoch, one of the world's content kings, virtually saying that the Net is bunk, there's not much hope out there for fresh information via the Net.

But that's not how the lads at Cricinfo.com see things. They've just banked $37.5 million of Indian tech giant Satyam Infoway's money -- and they cut the deal to sell 25% of their company well after the worst of the tech wreck. If the name doesn't ring a bell, it's likely you are neither a cricket fan or from the subcontinent -- usually two of the same thing.

I'm of the first variety and have been following my favorite sport via Cricinfo for five years. Cricket is the perfect sport for the statistics-obsessed. And Cricinfo delivers. It is one of the deepest and richest content sites on the Net -- it just goes on and on and is provided through banks of dedicated servers in India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Britain and the U.S.

To non-followers, cricket is a strange undertaking -- grown men in white flannels chasing a hard red ball around a hot stadium in games that can take five days to finish. It might seem slow -- it's not actually -- but it's a perfect sport for the Net. The time it takes to bowl each ball is the time it takes for the average browser to refresh. Thus you get fresh information every time you click in, effectively following the game in real time, which is great if you are a cricket fan in a place like North America where it's not a big sport.

But don't take my word for it: ask the 60% of New York cabbies that are Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi. I did back in 1996 and I've been a loyal follower ever since.

Cricinfo is the creation of a team of Brits who rightly decided that their sport was being overlooked by electronic media. There were golf channels and football channels, but no cricket channels. And they figured that around 20% of the world's population were obsessed by the sport. Furthermore, most of that population lived in a country becoming equally obsessed by technology: India. It seemed a no-brainer, and in the market gap, it was. Now they are $37.5 million richer and have a website that's making money. Even Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, another rabid cricket fan, has signed on in a Cricinfo deal.

Having spent the last few days on the terraces of Calcutta's famous ground, Eden Gardens, escaping the stock market rout to watch Australia do battle with India in 40(degrees)C heat, I am now convinced of the genius of Cricinfo. One of the non-Bengalis in the fanatical 80,000-strong crowd, I've been doused in water (at least I hope it was water), and pelted by chapatis and dahl, as well as rolled up copies of The Telegraph and The Times of India. It was all good-natured of course; the locals were simply celebrating an Indian triumph.

Everyone seemed to know Cricinfo and everyone mouthed its statistics. And many seemed to have beeping mobile phones -- no doubt getting their latest Cricinfo updates. Even though the game was being played right before their very own eyes.