Along with uploading results at the end of a days play, the live score feature allows fans, down to the club and school level the ability to follow the fortunes of their favourite side in one centralised location. For example, this season Auckland Cricket has has placed an iframe on their website that displays all the matches managed by the CricHQ competition system, making it easy for viewers to keep up to date with the weekends results.

The ability for fans to follow matches live is proving popular. This is evident by the opening three rounds of the Fergus Hickey and Brian Dunning competition played in Taupo between the 11th and 13th of November. The six fixtures covered by CricHQ in this Northern Districts minor associations competition resulted in over 300 hours of time spent by viewers on the CricHQ website.

However, with the technology being so new, like anything else it takes time to adapt. To minimise the learning curve for the Associations using the competition management system, CricHQ has installed a full time customer support service headed by Jimmy McLellan. Jimmy and his team provide an extensive customer support service which includes: fielding calls, replying to emails and continually posting “how to” material on CricHQ.com and the CricHQ app.

CricHQ has also included a manual upload function for matches not scored on the CricHQ app to assist in this change over period. The manual upload function allows match details for a fixture scored using a pen and paper to still be added to the CricHQ competition management system. Therefore the Associations still gain the majority of benefits that the CricHQ competition management system provides while they transition to scoring all the matches in the competition on a CricHQ app.

Technology Update – The Cloud

CEO Report

CricHQ has a big vision for the future - To house the words biggest cricket social network.

To make this vision a living reality CricHQ needed to go where no other cricketing technology had gone before…. to the cloud!

Although cloud technology is nothing new, CricHQ has become the first to integrate its cricket app with the cloud.

Since the CricHQ Competition Management System relies so heavily on the cloud based technology to function there was a big push by the development team to have the necessary technology system in place for the first ball of the New Zealand season.

Chief Developer Leo Gui said there were “many late nights and long days for the development team getting the technology ready for the new season.” The result was the release of CricHQ app 4.0 - the first cricket app with cloud capability.

Leo has described implementing the cloud technology as “a time of great learning.” This learning period has included stabilising the way the cloud technology works alongside the CricHQ app, fixing early bugs and incorporating user feedback into CricHQ’s functionality.

Implementing cloud technology means the CricHQ app (on a smart device like an iPhone or iPad) can now effortlessly share data with the CricHQ data warehouse. Before this upgrade to the cloud each CricHQ app on a smart device existed in its own world. Essentially, this meant that if the required information wasn’t already on a users app, like the opposition teams players then these players had to be added manually to the CricHQ app on their device.

This has all changed now the CricHQ app has been integrated with the

Competition Management The close of the Northern Hemisphere cricket season means the start of Cricket down under, and things have never been busier at CricHQ.

New recruit from last month’s newsletter, Nathan Pilalis hit the road during the New Zealand off season, covering the length and breadth of the country to show off the new CricHQ competition management system to all the major New Zealand cricket associations. And they liked what they saw. By the end of Nathan’s three week road trip, 26 out of the 31 New Zealand associations ( 6 major associations, 22 minor associations, 2 college sport & New Zealand Cricket) had jumped at the chance to implement, in varying degrees, CricHQ’s new competition management system for the upcoming cricket season.

What they liked most about CricHQ’s competition management system is its ability to seamlessly integrate with the CricHQ technology suite. They realised the best way to utilise the data captured while scoring a match on the CricHQ app was to upgrade to the competition management system.

The new CricHQ cloud technology has paved the way for this integration, allowing information to be downloaded and uploaded with the touch of a button. With the CricHQ app already revolutionising the way cricket is scored, the new cloud technology has just increased the apps power.

Once clubs, teams, players, venues and fixtures have been added to the competition management system, that information can then be accessed by the verified match scorers on the day. This means, players, teams, match venues, and fixtures no longer need to be manually entered each time a match is played. All these details can simply be downloaded from the CricHQ cloud, straight to the CricHQ scoring device, significantly decreasing the time it takes to set up a new fixture.

At the end of a days play, when the stumps are drawn the process is the same. With the click of a button all the match details are uploaded to CricHQ data warehouse. Once the competition administrator has verified the result, the match result automatically updates the competition points table along with the public being able to view the match details.

This has opened the door for players, coaches and fans to easily find and view CricHQ’s match statistics. These include wagon wheels, match reports and the soon to be released player profiles.

It probably comes as a shock to most cricket fans that the world’s oldest international sporting fixture is in fact a cricket match. Even more surprisingly that it is between the USA and Canada!

First contested in 1844 in New York, the Auty Cup was dedicated by Chicago-based K.A. Auty to commemorate the winner of the two-day match. Annual play was halted due to financial reasons in 1995 but resumed after 16 years in 2011.

Canada is the reigning champions and has held the title since 1992. Sixty-nine matches were played between 1844 and 2011 with the USA winning 32, Canada winning 26 and 11 drawn matches.

On the 14th and 15th of November of this year the rivalry resumed in Fort Lauderdale Florida at the Central Broward County International Stadium. The Auty Cup is a 2-day traditional 2-innings cricket match. However to make the series more interesting and contemporary, additional limited overs matches were added to the fixtures for the 2012 edition. A 50 over match was played on November 16 followed by 2 T20 matches on November 17.

I had the pleasure of scoring all of the games on the CricHQ app and also commentating on the live webstream broadcast. Muti-tasking is not easy for males at the best of times, but thankfully the CricHQ app is very easy to use and worked without a glitch for 4 days straight. In fact it actually aided my commentary as I constantly had the score on hand and could refer to the CricHQ statistical and graphical analysis of the games in real time.

Anyway, back to the cricket…

Canada went into the week the better prepared of the two sides and consequently came out on top in 3 of the 4 matches. A number of the

more experienced members of the USA squad were unavailable due to other commitments, and although it meant that a number of talented youngsters got an opportunity to showcase their talents, it was always going to be difficult for them up against an experienced and settled Canadian lineup. Canada won the Auty cup match by 82 runs on the first innings, and then easily dispatched the USA in the 50 over match and the first of the T20s. However the USA finished the week on a high by convincingly beating Canada in the final T20 match.

All of the matches were run through the new CricHQ Competition Management platform, which enabled draw creation, player MVP points calculation, and automatic integration with the scoring app.

Auty Cup Report

CEO Report New RecruitFujitsu Heat PumpsMVP

Technology UpdateCricHQ’s cloud is unveiled

Competition ManagementCricHQ has been traveling all over showing off our awesome new competition management system

Auty Cup ReportCrickets oldest rivialry continues

Here at CricHQ things move fast, and as the growth continues the need for a full time Sales Manager has become necessary. The man charged with building the CricHQ sales force to take CricHQ’s technology to the world is Neil Martin. Neil, who joined the company in early October is responsible for building and managing relationships with the key CricHQ stakeholders around the globe along with providing direction for CricHQ’s regional sales team. With 12 years IT experience in various sales and marketing roles, Neil brings a wealth of industry specific knowledge with him to CricHQ.

Neil, you’ve been at the company almost two months now. How have you found your time so far ?

Its been great. There are a number of real characters in the office that make CricHQ an enjoyable place to work. Kieran & Glenn in particular are never shy to banter with each other

Could you tell us more about your Cricketing background ?

In my earlier years I represented the England U19 side as a fast bowler which included tours to Pakistan & South Africa. I also had three seasons as a contracted player with the Middlesex County side, before leaving the UK & coming to NZ

An injury spelled an early end your English County Career. Could you tell us more about that?

I suffered a number of stress fractures in my lower back & on each occasion tried to return too soon causing more problems. I’ve not bowled a ball for nearly 13 years now. It has however allowed me to become a batsman which I’ve found is a far more enjoyable way to participate in the game.

Who were some of the cricketing characters of the game you played with Middlesex?

They were all characters in their own way, the famous ones include Kallis, Gatting, Langer, Ramprakash & Tufnell, but by far the best characters I’ve played with, who have provided the memorable moments, have all come at club level.

Cricketing Highlight?

It would have to be representing my country at U19 level. We won the world cup in 1998, the only time England ever has, unfortuantely i missed the finals due to injury but it was still great to be a part of it. More than half of that team went on to play for England in the next couple of years What makes you excited about working at CricHQ?

Ultimately its about the people. The people here are all great, no exceptions.

When a match is scored on the CricHQ App, each player will automatically be assigned MVP points for their performance. The actual number of MVP points a player generates for a match is calculated using the complex formula developed by the Professionals Cricket Association (PCA) in 2007.

To devise this formula the PCA set up a MVP committee in 2006. It was the committee’s responsibility to develop a cumulative points system that rewards players for every run scored, every wicket taken, every catch held and, how well they do it.

The abbreviated MVP formula they developed is:

Batting + Bowling + Fielding + Captaincy + Winning = Total MVP points

Although the final formula is complex, it is truly reflective of the players’ view of the game and is currently the best system to rank a players performances in a match.

The MVP functionality is yet another bonus of scoring cricket on the CricHQ app. In fact every match scored on the CricHQ app or manually uploaded to CricHQ will generate MVP points for the players in the fixture. These MVP results can either be viewed on the application itself or on the match report that is generated when the fixture is uploaded to the CricHQ data warehouse.

Although getting an MVP ranking for each player in a fixture is powerful within itself, its real benefit comes when the match is scored within the competition management system. This allows the each players MVP points in a competition to accumulate, giving players, coaches, selectors and fans a simple way to gauge who are the best overall performers in a specific competition.

CricHQ’s MVP functionality has led the New Zealand Players association (in conjunction with official sponsor Fujitsu Heat Pumps) to enlist CricHQ to manage both the International and the New Zealand Domestic MVP points table.

These accumulative MVP tables, located on the CricHQ homepage give an accurate real time indication of the best performing cricketers in world cricket.

Here at CricHQ we like to reward great cricket and this New Zealand summer players will be receive a small prize for outstanding personal performances. Hell’s Pizza has kindly donated free pizza vouchers this summer for the Fujitsu Heat Pumps MVP of each match (verified) scored on CricHQ.

This initiative will kick off at the start of December and we look forward to promoting the MVP of the month in future newsletters.

New Recruit

Fujitsu Heat Pumps MVP

“It would have to be representing my country at U19 level. We won the world cup in 1998”Neil Martin

Greatest cricketing moment

Catch up with the CricHQ CEO Meet CricHQ’s newest employee

Get to know what MVP is

In my last update I mentioned the possibility of relocating the CricHQ head quarters to a new location. Over the past month this became a necessity and then a reality. It’s an exciting time for me as CEO, growth in staff can only be good for business and with the seemingly daily addition of personnel to the team, the time has come to move onto a more expansive location. With the relocation planned to take place at the start of February it should coincide nicely with the New Zealand vs England T20 match in Wellington on the 15th, where we hope a couple of our shareholders can join in the official opening.

Growth seems to be the theme of November with the CricHQ website surpassing 2,000,000 page views in a month, making it the busiest web traffic month since record’s began. Although these figures are impressive, they are just a flow on effect of CricHQ doing many things right. It is pleasing to see tangible results for all that the hard work the CricHQ team is doing at grass roots level - scoring matches, forming new partnerships, running tournaments and managing relationships.

It seems the global cricketing community is finding its way to CricHQ, and to assist this process and extend CricHQ’s reach in the Southern Hemisphere I, along with Sales Manager Neil Martin and Product Manager Jarred Sewell took a trip to Melbourne. Our time there resulted in laying the initial foundations of a partnership with Cricket Australia which we hope will progress fairly quickly. To compliment this we have hired two new Australian based staff - Ari Ritz has come on board as the East Asia Pacific Regional Manager, and Will Chambers as the Commercial Manager.

With a busy cricketing calendar now in full swing down-under I look forward to seeing the theme of growth continue in the months ahead and well into the future.

Simon Baker, CEO

In This Issue

November 2012Newsletter

cloud. Scorers can now turn up on match day, find the opposition team on the cloud (provided they have an internet connection) and download the team list to their smart device. Over an entire season this feature will dramatically decrease the set up time in creating fixtures - enough time to put the feet up and have a cuppa before the action gets underway on the pitch.

And its not just players that can be found on the cloud, but also fixtures, umpires, teams and venues - all the information you need to start scoring a match.

In addition to saving time, the cloud technology also opens the way for user collaboration. This user collaboration includes updating player

“This ability for fans to follow matches live is proving popular.”

information which can then be used by the next person who downloads the same player from the cloud. For example, if a scorer with the right permissions downloads a player from the cloud, updates the players batting style to a right hand batsman, then the next person who downloads that player from the the cloud already has access to his updated player information.

This new technology upgrade has taken the vision of providing the cricketing community with the worlds biggest cricket social network and made it into an achievable goal in the not too distant future!

This system is exceptional in its current form, and with plenty of other bells and whistles to be added in the near future it will only get better!

Overall the series was a great success. Feedback from the players and officials regarding CricHQ was very positive, and both the USACA and Cricket Canada boards should be congratulated for the efforts that went into organizing the event.

I’m already looking forward to a bigger and better Auty Cup in 2013!

Jamie Lloyd Americas Manager

“I had the pleasure of scoring all of the games on the CricHQ app and also commentating on the live webstream broadcast” - Jamie Lloyd

“Many late nights and long days for the development team getting the technology ready for the new season.” - Leo Gui

Its a ground breaking time at CricHQ. As the early wrinkle’s are ironed out of the system, the future looks bright to continually extended the number of matches hosted on the competition management system around the globe.