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Adith Charlie

Viewers can drum up statistics of their favourite players, while watching them in action, at the click of a mouse.

Mumbai , Nov. 13

Next time you watch pacer Brett Lee barrel towards the determined Sachin Tendulkar in a cricket face-off, you can come to know the exact number of times the master-blaster was castled by Lee for a duck. Or the number of sixes conceded by Lee to Tendulkar. And, for this, you do not have to rely on the BCCI-appointed statistician.

Leg spinner Anil Kumble and a team of software experts are about to take cricket viewing to a different level.

The Bangalore-based StumpVision Private Ltd is working on a cricket analysis software, which is likely to be launched in January 2007. With this software, viewers can drum up statistics of their favourite players, while watching them in action, at the click of a mouse. That, too, in the language of their choice.

Mr V. Krishnan, Director, StumpVision Pvt Ltd, says, "With MatchCast, you can get ball-by-ball data of all international cricket matches played from 1999 onwards. Moreover, you can check out cricket statistics while watching live cricket on your television." The software will also incorporate features such as Hawk Eye and Wagon Wheel on a 3D platform, through its independent mechanism, he told Business Line.

Understanding the game

Mr Anil Kumble, Director, StumpVision, believes that MatchCast will take cricket viewing to new heights. "Viewers will be able to personalise their cricket by deciding what they want to know about the match and the players. Moreover, it will enable people to understand complex rules of the game like the Duckworth-Lewis system at the click of a button," he said.

The company also has long-term plans to release the product in regional languages and for the visually challenged, an area were television has not yet ventured into. "We see a tremendous market for the software in regional languages," said Mr Krishnan.

MatchCast is modelled on the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) platform of the yet-to-be launched Windows Vista.

Viewing the ensuing World Cup as a tremendous marketing opportunity, the company plans to launch MatchCast by the second week of January. The company will also launch the Microsoft Excel variant of Scorite, the official scoring software used by BCCI and its associations around the same time.

Product pricing

Though the pricing strategy for the product is under wraps, Mr Krishnan claims that it will be reasonably priced. "We are working at different delivery models and are in the process of evaluating our pricing strategy," he said.

Mr Kumble feels that the scope of the product could be extended beyond cricket. "MatchCast is a cricket engine, which can be utilised for other sports like football and tennis as well," he said.

StumpVision also has plans to extend its data capturing mechanism to the sphere of domestic cricket. "We intend to document data from all domestic cricket matches held in the country. This will throw open a bigger product market for us," said Mr Krishnan.

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