Cricket crew’s power play
‘ It’s going to change the way people watch sport.’ MIKE LOFTUS, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN OF CRICHQ
A Kiwi startup is on the way to becoming a big player in the world of sports technology.
CricHQ started five years ago as a handful of staff, under a veteran club captain, with an unstable scoring app.
Now it’s seeking dominance of the global cricket software as a service market, a year on from raising US$10 million from a Singaporean investment fund.
With well over 100 staff, the majority of whom are in India, it already claims to record one in every 10 balls bowled in organised cricket globally, and is targeting one in every two within four years.
The company, now based in a former restaurant in Kelburn, Wellington, has even more ambitious plans when it comes to using technology to monetise the massive worldwide interest in the game. Not only that, but its software could help uncover superstar talent.
Mike Loftus, who became executive chairman earlier this year, said virtual reality cameras could soon allow grandparents to watch 12 year-olds ‘‘as if you were standing in the umpire’s shoes’’.
‘‘It’s going to change the way people watch sport. You place a 360 degree camera anywhere on the ground or on the umpire or on the player, or wherever it is, and you can watch the game as if you were on the field playing the same,’’ he said.
CricHQ was founded by former Karori Cricket Club captain Simon Baker, who recruited former Black Cap captains Stephen Fleming and Brendon McCullum as shareholders, helping give the company profile and opening cricketing doors.
Although when it was launched it was briefly among the world’s most downloaded sporting apps, there was little obvious sign of what was to come.
Baker is now based in the UK, and the company’s staff are spread across a number of countries, as it bids to become global.
CricHQ has signed up 49 international cricketing bodies as customers, and while most are minnows, the group includes New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa.
Loftus said it is in talks with all other test playing nations – bar Australia, which has developed its own scoring platform.
Crucial to winning the global market will be winning favour in India, by far the biggest cricket market on earth, and accordingly most of the CricHQ’s staff are based there, with eight in New Delhi and 80 in Kochi.
Some of India’s major regional cricketing bodies have already officially adopted the technology. The initial interest was not the scoring itself, but the chance to search the country’s millions of players for talent.
‘‘It was all about talent identification. Helping to identify the next Sachin Tendulkar,’’ Loftus said, using the mining of data to uncover stars who may otherwise be held back by bias or politics.
It is the massive amount of data which is likely to yield the most value and more innovative services.
‘‘We now have 10 per cent of cricket balls bowled through our platform, either through live scor- ing or after the game,’’ Loftus said.
‘‘We want to be up to 40-50 per cent within two or three years of the world cricket market. The bigger your base becomes, the more opportunity there is to monetise that base.’’
Mining of the data could have a range of possible uses, from talent identification, to detecting match fixing, to developing betting odds.
While match predictors already use analytics from the history of cricket, CricHQ may soon begin generating a ball predictor, calculating how batters and bowlers will react in given situations..
CricHQ’s platform has even more value off the field. The app can remind players it’s registration time, and help club officials work out which teams are playing when and where – services the app’s creators believe could easily translate to other sports.
The company’s potential was highlighted in June 2015, when Baker and Fleming announced Tembusu Partners would provide US$10m (NZ$13.4m) to fund its expansion.
Loftus would not give details of whether the company was now profitable. ‘‘There’s potential for a whole range of different options to grow further and raising funds if need be, but having said that we may not need to.’’