ESPNcricinfo Celebrates 20th Anniversary
ESPNcricinfo is celebrating its 20th anniversary. To commemorate the last two decades the ESPN digital platforms have a compelling line up that traces the brand’s journey alongside the journey of cricket as it has unfolded over the last 20 years.
Founded in 1993, the original website Cricinfo was one of the earliest examples of a community-driven online enterprise at a time when websites were unheard of.
Led by Dr. Simon King and a group of like-minded volunteers, it began with a simple objective: to deliver cricket scores and updates to an audience of passionate fans that yearned for them.
It was conceptualised at a time when the internet was unheard of, and its popularity grew exponentially as it pioneered the path-breaking technology behind live scoring of matches and ball-by-ball commentary, while simultaneously developing one of the most credible and comprehensive sports journalism platforms to deliver award-winning news, commentary and analysis from many of the world’s top cricket writers, reporters and editors. Today, ESPNcricinfo is not merely the world’s most-preferred destination for cricket’s news and information, but also the game’s leading global voice.
“While Cricinfo was born out of incredible enthusiasm and passion for the sport of cricket, it is sustained by innovation. At the heart of our success is a keen understanding of the cricket fan, an intuitive approach to changing trends in the engagement with content on digital media platforms, and the commitment to be at the forefront of technology and journalism. As we look forward, we will remain grounded in the values that have held us in good stead all these years, while simultaneously playing to our strength – which is to celebrate our collective love for cricket and bring fans the world over even closer to this amazing game.” said Ramesh Kumar, Head of ESPNcricinfo and ESPN Digital Media
At the dawn of the internet revolution, Cricinfo was established by a group of cricket enthusiasts who began updating a, now seemingly-primitive, level of cricket information through Usenet. The portal proved to be way ahead of its time by publishing quality discussions and compelling pieces of analysis and commentary on cricket. The website continued to evolve, including adding and maintaining an exhaustive information and statistics database. At the time, the creators used tools similar to blogs or Twitter to gather and distribute scores online, long before the advent of social media. Soon it became the one-stop-shop for all things cricket.
To kick-start the 20th anniversary celebrations, ESPNcricinfo has today launched a special section that features a range of content, tracing the evolution of the sport and of ESPNcricinfo over the last two decades. A host of video content will also feature on the special section, including documentary interviews and stories, as well as photo galleries and other illustrations of the journey that both cricket and ESPNcricinfo have taken in the past two decades.
The section will also feature special video interviews and features including series like Cricketers on Cricinfo – interviews with players such as Mahela Jayawardene, John Wright and others; A Day in the Life of ESPNcricinfo – Sydney to Seattle via Bangalore, Birmingham, London; and other special documentary style interviews and features including interviews with some of the sites early developers and founders.
Over the coming months, ESPNcricinfo will also host a series of special cricket roundtable summits in key cricketing nations, where some of the top voices in the industry will join together and discuss some of the most significant topics in the sport today and what the next 20 years of cricket may bring. Additionally, there will be region-specific activities in several top cricketing markets.
