BBC-Cricinfo partnership brewing?

Why else would there be such a remarkable coincidence? On BBC Sport's "Stump Bearders" section, Bill Frindall answers this question

Nikhil Kotnis, UK

My great uncle, Kandu Rangneker, played one Test for India in Australia in the 1930s (I think). He didn't get a great score then, but I gather he was fairly prolific in domestic cricket. Do you have any info?

Your great uncle, Khanderao Moreshwar ('Kandu) Rangnekar (1917-1984) was indeed a prolific scorer in Indian domestic cricket for Holkar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bombay.

A left-handed batsman and right-arm medium-paced bowler, he appeared in 85 first-class matches (1939-64), scoring 4605 runs, averaging 41.83, taking 21 wickets (best 5-112) and holding 42 catches.

He celebrated his first-class debut in 1939-40 by scoring the first of his 15 centuries, 102 for Maharashtra v Western India at Poona. The highest of his three double-centuries was 217 for Holkar v Hyderabad in 1950-51. He appeared in three Tests in Australia in 1947-48 scoring 33 runs at 5.50 (1, 0, 6, 18, 8 and 0).

A vice-president of the Indian Board of Control, he became president of the Bombay Cricket Association.

On Cricinfo, Steven Lynch gets gets this question

When I was a child in the 1970s, a man came for dinner, and said he had played for India. He must have been in his fifties then. He said he played three Tests, candidly admitted he didn't do well, but two things he said about his debut Test stick in my memory. First, that the two best Australian batsmen were both out hit wicket, and also that he himself was out in both innings to somebody they called the "Black Prince". Which Indian cricketer could this have been, and who was the Aussie? Thanks for any help ... I've been tormented by this for years! asked Dilip D'Souza from Bombay

Your dinner guest must have been Khandu Rangnekar, a stylish left-hander who made 102 on his first-class debut, for Maharashtra against Western India at Poona in 1939-40, and who also made three double-centuries, the highest 217 for Holkar against Hyderabad at Indore in the 1950-51 Ranji Trophy semi-final. He won three Test caps, all in Australia in 1947-48, and didn't cover himself with glory, making only 33 runs in his six innings. On his debut, at Brisbane in November 1947, both Arthur Morris (who made 47) and Don Bradman (185) were out hit wicket. Rangnekar himself made only 1 and 0, falling in both innings to the left-armer Ernie Toshack ... whose nickname was indeed "The Black Prince", apparently on account of his curly dark hair. Toshack had the amazing figures of 5 for 2 in the first innings, and added 6 for 29 in the second. It was India's first tour of Australia, and proved a difficult one: the Aussies won that first Test by an innings and 226 runs, and took the series 4-0, with Bradman scoring 715 runs at an average of 178.75. Rangnekar later became the president of the Bombay Cricket Association, and vice-president of the Indian board: sadly, he died in 1984.

Labels: cricinfo

Thus spake Jagadish @ 7:44 pm | Sledge/Read 3 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Cricinfo search sucks

Last year, I wrote about Cricinfo's improved content management & presentation and yet their search leaving a lot to be desired.

Today, since Ganesh wanted to know if Imran Khan and Javed Miandad did their retirement turnarounds when an England tour was around the corner, just like Shahid Afridi and Sanath Jayasuriya did.

If I remember right, Imran was asked to come back to play the 1992 tournament ... or he had retired after the 1987 World Cup and was asked to come back to help out the side. I recall Miandad making his comeback sometime just before the 1996 World Cup to play in his sixth tournament.

In any case, I have digressed enough. I tried to get to their player profiles and did a search. Getting to Miandad's page wasn't tough. But getting to Imran's was really tough. I first did a search on Cricinfo for Imran and didn't see his name in the results page. Then I searched for Imran Khan without seeing him listed in the results. In desperation, given I knew his full name, I searched for Imran Khan Niazi and even then didn't get to his page.

It shouldn't be tough to finetune the search engine to report international players in the first few search results rather than unknown players, should it? Then again, maybe I was doing something wrong!

Like the bard wrote

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Labels: cricinfo

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:02 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Somebody throw the Cricinfo commentator a rule book, please!

This is what Cricinfo had just now when India got all out for a paltry 203 at the Kotla. The background is that Harbhajan got out to Kabir Ali in the 3rd ball of the 47th over and Sreesanth got out the very next ball

46.4 Ali to Sreesanth, OUT, And thats that! Full and a tad slower outside off, Sreesanth goes for it and can only lob that high in the air to Pietersen at extra cover, India all out for 203!
Ali will be on a hat-trick the next time he bowls, good stuff from him and England

Since when have hat-tricks in international cricket spanned games? First-class hat-tricks may span innings, not limited over ones.

Labels: cricinfo

Thus spake Jagadish @ 12:45 pm | Sledge/Read 4 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Cricinfo turns thirteen soon!

I'm late in spotting this, but I was on holiday. So I do have an excuse! Last week, "The Guardian" had a nice review on Cricinfo's recent moves, including monetization of content through mobile services.

I really do wish Cricinfo a lot of success, considering it is one site that I've followed for nearly thirteen years now, starting from following quite a few matches of the Hero Cup on IRC, then using the Gopher site (cricinfo.cse.ogi.edu, port 7070), using the early incarnations of the website (www.cricket.org, port 8001 etc.), working there for four years, watching them being taken over by merged with Wisden and then finally see a revamped look and feel of the website as well as seeing them embrace features like RSS, a better search mechanism etc.

Labels: cricinfo

Thus spake Jagadish @ 8:52 pm | Sledge/Read 3 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Sponsored listings on Cricinfo

I just noticed that a Cricinfo story on Warne being reported for dissent has advertisements from Overture, acquired by Yahoo! in 2003 and now called Yahoo! Search Marketing. Here is the screenshot.



In addition, the Cricinfo search seems to now be powered by Yahoo!

Labels: cricinfo

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:05 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Cricinfo's content makeover

While Cricinfo has seldom had problems with the depth and breadth of its content, it has always suffered from an inability to structure and present the information in a much better fashion. I do own up some responsibility for how it used to be. After all, I did work there for quite a while.

But they seem to have moved on to a new content management system recently and I think the amount of cross-linking between relevant stories has increased a lot now. The search still needs to be worked on though. For e.g. at the news index, what do the "Global" and "All" radio button options really mean when I try to search for news content? When I search for "sunil gavaskar retirement", without the quotes, why do I get extremely irrelevant results? Why isnt there a help page indicating how I should structure my queries to get the right results?

There has always been a news index page. There used to be a photos index page but it was horribly organized, and typically outdated. The new CMS seems to have helped. Check out their image index.

Oh, and they have also enabled RSS feeds for a variety of content. I'm waiting for their live scores RSS feeds.

Labels: cricinfo

Thus spake Jagadish @ 6:38 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

We worked for CricInfo. Do you want to?

Labels: cricinfo

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:03 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Cricinfo announced internet audio coverage of the Asia Cup for US$4.99 (£2.60) through its newly launched CricInfo Radio service.

Labels: cricinfo

Thus spake Jagadish @ 3:21 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]