Cricket: Digital technology to impact game

Northland Cricket's competitions manager Neal Parlane is hoping clubs get behind the new CricHQ technology which seeks to statistically profile players from as early as possible. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Northlanders are acting as test pilots for New Zealand Cricket as new technology looks to change the game by statistically profiling cricketers from as early as possible.

While club cricketers are preparing for the first round of the Lion Red Cup 50-over competition, administrators are readying themselves to document via iPad, smartphone, and tablets who scored what.

The new technology works through the CricHQ website and aims to have breakdowns of club players' statistics.

However, like many data-collecting methods, the accuracy of the information is only as good as what is put in.

Former first-class cricketer, and Northland Cricket Association competitions manager, Neal Parlane said the possibilities of the programme was unbelievable, adding that he wished he had it during his career.

"At my age it'd be fantastic [to look back]," Parlane commented. "If you've got a good scorer doing it you can get your pitch maps, wagon wheels, percentage of runs in front of square, behind square. It's just having people who can do that, but our club cricketers are just doing dot ball, dot ball [and so on].

"The idea has been received well, the problem with it is clubs aren't going to be able to afford to go out and buy an iPad. CricHQ were meant to buy clubs iPads but haven't yet.

"Most clubs around the country have a designated scorer, but up here one of the [playing] 11 does it. People say 'oh no I can't do it' but all you do is press a button, every ball you press a button."

Parlane said so far one of the biggest obstacles was getting teams to upload their game data, which was made harder due to match venues not having access to wifi.

However, Parlane added that games would simply be stored until a wifi source was available and it would be uploaded onto the CricHQ website.

While the scoring technology was used last season, without much success due to lack of club buy-in and teething problems with CricHQ, this year Parlane hoped clubs would hit the ground running and get in behind it.

New Zealand Cricket chief operating officer Craig Presland said the partnership between NZC and CricHQ was great news for everyone involved in cricket around the country.

"CricHQ is going to make the administration, scheduling and analysis of games at all levels much easier for everyone from club managers and administrators, coaches, umpires and scorers, through to players and their families and supporters."

CricHQ Chief Executive Simon Baker said the project was a major milestone for the company best-known domestically for its popular smart phone and tablet cricket scoring application.

"Aside from our App and some household name cricket player investors, we've been flying under the radar here in New Zealand. We've got some big partnerships in place overseas around competition management and player databases and now we are stoked to be working with NZC in our own backyard now too."