Friday, May 2, 2008

My favorite website.


There are millions of websites on the internet. Only few of them are your favorites. Those who are part of your daily routine. Those you cannot live without. Those that always surprise you. I have couple of my favorites. Gmail and Cricinfo.com While Gmail is the first one for me to go to every morning, cricinfo is where all the excitement is (for me). From scores to news to pictures and now my all time favorite "Sportscenter (Trademark ESPN)" is there too. I knew, the partnership with ESPN is going to get the best out of Cricinfo.com. Today, I want to share my favorite feature with you. Cricinfo is like a Bible of cricket. Benefited from its old relationship with Wisden, Cricinfo has all kinds of records and history of cricket/cricketers. Called the Statsguru, it is often fascinating to write queries on the vast database.
E.g. I can query within minutes, who all score centuries for India against Pakistan, in Tests, as openers. Here is the result (courtesy is Cricinfo)





Click to enlarge.Whenever my buddies and I have a discussion about figures/records/stats, I quickly go to cricinfo.com and get the facts shared.
The other thing that really appeals me is the ball-by-ball commentary. When I was in India at home and used to watch all the matches, I thought the ball-by-ball commentary is a non-sense idea. But today, I am sitting in US where nobody cares about cricket and I don't get to watch games, I like the commentary very much. Its like enjoying the game on radio where you are equally engrossed in the game as TV but just cannot watch it.
Recently when IPL thinktank decided not to give rights to others for distributing pictures on websites and newspapers, I felt so bad that a nice tournament like this won't have pictures stored in it database. So our kids won't enjoy them later.
For me, cricinfo.com is a one stop shop for cricket. Its like a Unix manual sitting on my desk which I refer every now and then and something as fascinating.
Cricinfo Statsguru

blog comments powered by Disqus