The Cricket Social

I know I’ve been hibernating for way too long. It’s not that I’m not watching cricket or feeling complacent to write or anything. It is just that I found something way too interesting that put me unfortunately in a state of hibernation. Nevertheless, I always love writing and love cricket even more.

Couple of years or so ago, one of my friend (Raj Sundaram) and a cricket mate of me at Cricket League of New Jersey who also runs his own Corporation (Hexacorp) approached me to come up with a product for administering cricket leagues. According to him, cricket at club level is managed by cricket leagues and there is no universal software product (or in other words standard product in the market) that aids the administration of the league. So, he wanted to come up with a Cricket ERP (something like SAP for manufacturing, Tally for Accounting) that addresses the needs of a Cricket League to run the show.

By all means, I’ve no idea what made him to choose me (probably my passion for cricket following) to design this product. Anyways, I got started there. The requirement is pretty clear. We need a software product (ideally universal one) that aids the administration of a cricket league. The product should also cater to the needs of the clubs that participate in the league. Last, but not the least, the players who are part of the league should be benefited. Added to that we need the product to setup a good communication platform for the League – Team – Players and any other parties involved in the setup.

After few weeks of wandering in LALA land, came up with a decent idea. The concept goes like this “What if CricInfo runs on Facebook”.  Ideally CricInfo is the encyclopedia of every professional cricketer in the planet. Facebook is arguably the no.1 social networking platform. What if there is a product like CricInfo (ideally CricInfo of club cricketers) that sits on a Facebook like Social Networking platform. Isn’t it exciting? CricketSocial was born here with this concept.

Now, I would like to add little more about CricketSocial to put some perspective. Well, CricketSocial is made of 3 key entities - Amateur Cricket Players (Cricket Buddies), Cricket Clubs and Cricket Leagues.  Now each of these entities has a need. We are looking to address those needs @ CricketSocial.

A decade ago, an amateur cricket player’s cricket scores confine to memories of few minds that remember the game or remain as paper cuttings published in the daily news magazine. With CricketSocial, every amateur club cricketer will have a biography to show the world. All their scorecards (irrespective of the team or league they represent) are covered in CricketSocial.

If a person relocates (even continents), the person will now be able to resume their cricket life seamlessly by finding cricket leagues, cricket teams, cricket merchants, other cricket buddies living around them instantly at CricketSocial. So, finding Cricket is not tough any more in a new place.

A player can turn all their scorecards (biography) into a cricket book with a click of a button. The cricket book can help to build a resume for a cricketer or even decorate the shelf of their home as a souvenir. 

The product also has host of other rich features like Event Management, Player Compare, Cricket Book, Team Management and League Management to complete the circle.

Scoring of the cricket match are done live using a Cricket Social Scoring App (IOS - iPhone/iPad). As the scorer of the match scores in the App, the same will be updated instantly in cricketsocial.com Portal (if the device is equipped with active internet connection). Fans and other interested buddies can follow the scores immediately from wherever they are.

After lots of hardships of several individuals and years of working, the product finally saw the light of the day on 24^th Apr 2016 (Sachin Tendulkar’s Bday).

The product is conceived after a noble idea. The dream is certainly big. Hopefully CricketSocial gains traction and the cricket playing public make the most of it. And someday in the future, CricketSocial will be able to tell the story of every international cricketer before they made it to International Cricket. Ideally, the story of how Sachin Tendulkar became Sachin Tendulkar. Sounds great isn’t it.

Here is the 15 minute demo video of the product. If you find the demo too fast for you, you may be able to adjust the speed of the demo in the youtube settings. Again, this is not a video for general public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1G-kGpgU6k

At the moment, few leagues have agreed to try the product. The product is only a BETA at the moment. We are still working on some host of rich features.

Dinesh

Crazy Cricket Lover