HCL goes into bat for Cricket Australia

Cricket Australia has announced a multi-year partnership with HCL Technologies.

As digital technology partner, HCL will provide an “elevated and immersive digital experience” to fans, staff and players for Australian cricket’s governing body.

As part of the partnership, HCL will engineer a “digital core ecosystem” for Cricket Australia with a composable platform that will be modular, auto-scalable, data driven and experience-centric, integrating multiple industry standard products and services.

TheIndian multinational will also implement its ‘Scale Digital methodology’, helping the organisation move to an agile digital delivery model.

“Cricket is rapidly evolving here and overseas, and part of that evolution involves advancements in technology and the digital landscape,” said Cricket Australia CEO Kevin Roberts

“HCL, as our official digital technology partner,will help take our digital offerings to the next level and allow us to better connect with and inspire communities through cricket,” he added.

Cricket Australia’s previous digital partner was Accenture, who with Accenture delivered a live streaming platform, a new mobile app (the Cricket Australia Live App) and a number of content-rich websites. The Accenture partnership resulted in an 80 per cent increase in visitors to cricket.com.au, which now attracts more than two million visitors a month over the summer.

The governing body also has community cricket applications such as MyCricket andcommunity.cricket.com.au. More than two million fans attended cricket matches during the 2018/19 season.

“Cricket Australia is connecting with fans and participants through our digital platforms every minute of the day, through the stories and live match data oncricket.com.auright through to participants and community volunteers using ourMyCricketplatform,” Roberts said.

“The usage of these platforms continues to grow significantly, so partnering with a leading global technology provider to harness this growth and help us take advantage of our leading position is a natural next step,” he added.

Cricket Australia has an online audience exceeding 20 million globally per year and has established and maintained its position as the top sports destination in Australia throughout the summer, achieving a record unique Australian audience of 2.87 million in January 2019.

“The vision of this partnership is to continue igniting passion for the game and to grow lifelong fans for the wonderful sport of cricket. We look forward to providing the Australian cricket community with leading-edge digital technologies that support real-time, engaging, personalised and unified experiences,” said Michael Horton, HCL A/NZ country manager.

“HCL understands the importance of retaining and engaging fans in today’s digital world. We look forward to deploying our skills and experience to increase fan delight, high performance and community inspiration for the love of cricket,” he added.

Creating “exciting digital experiences” across all customer touchpoints is a key element of Cricket Australia’s five year strategy which launched in 2017. The use of technology will be enhanced for fans at matches and wherever they want to engage with the game, the strategy states.

The body is also applying technology to team selection, in recent years using a player performance platform powered by the Microsoft analytics suite.