A marriage is announced

The internet could have been invented for cricket. A game taking place in discrete moments - a wicket, a boundary, a bouncer - but spreading over a whole day is perfect for a medium that can capture those instants in real time, review them within minutes, and then allow them to be debated by fans and experts alike. Throw in a white-collar audience with computers on their desks and a packed international schedule taking place in many time zones, and the internet's ability to keep followers in touch with the game is unparalleled.

When 2002 began, it was still early days for the boldest experiment yet by a cricket website - the decision by Wisden.com to launch a subscription service. For most of the year, an intriguing talking point was whether Wisden.com would merge with CricInfo. The biggest cricket website was talking to the one with the most purchasing power; the two most famous names in cricket publishing were thinking about becoming one. Wisden.com was the most ambitious venture undertaken by the company since the launch of this book in 1864. Wisden had been approached by leading internet businesses during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, and chose to set up a joint site with The Guardian, Cricket Unlimited, which proved popular and respected but far from unlimited as it had no database. In 2000, Wisden were approached by a sports agency, Quintus, and formed a joint venture to create an alternative to the CricInfo leviathan. The new site was launched in August 2001, and the full service, including 139 years of the Almanack's articles and match reports, was in place by December.

Wisden's approach was to combine its huge archive, linked into specially written player pages, with match reporting that aimed to deliver newspaper quality at web speed. The timing would be a particular advantage during England tours of the subcontinent or Australasia, when the morning papers could be 24 hours behind the action. The result was coverage which was both sophisticated and impassioned, with a classy design and an overall quality that was a million miles from the bland, scrappy editorial on other cricket sites.

Rather than compete with CricInfo's popular ball-by-ball commentary, Wisden opted for a rapidly updated match bulletin, along with an atmospheric piece from the ground, an expert view from an ex-player and the Wisden Verdict on the day's defining moments. A statistical strand called Wisden 20:20 told readers just how rarely Glenn McGrath had strayed on to leg stump, and Nasser Hussain's openness with the media was cleverly exploited by signing him up for the Captain Calling column, usually delivered a couple of hours after the close, which often provided exclusive insights. During busy periods over the English winter, content was being added 20 hours in every 24 by an editorial team of eight in London and six (also producing Wisden Asia Cricket magazine) in Mumbai. Such a rich menu of opinion, analysis, reportage and statistics did not come cheap, but Wisden Online's management were confident cricket lovers would pay for it. From December, when the India-England Test series began, Wisden charged £25 for a year's access. Not much for the riches on offer - but a giant leap on the internet, where short but powerful traditions held that virtually all editorial content, including CricInfo's, was available free.

Wisden.com had set itself the ambitious target of attracting 30,000 subscribers in 2002, but come the end of England's tour of New Zealand in March it was only able to claim 1,000. Some blamed the lack of marketing to British cricket fans, others the wisdom of an offer based so heavily on an old-media model. All agreed that the price had been set too high, especially for those not used to paying UK or US prices.

In March, the management suddenly cut costs by scaling back the service and making half of the London editorial staff redundant, including the editor, Tim de Lisle. It was a move greeted with rage by those working on the site and bewilderment by some subscribers. Why had Wisden.com pulled the plug so quickly after investing so much time and money? Why had Wisden apparently surrendered the chance to establish themselves as cricket's voice of authority on the internet?

A partial answer lay in a deal brokered during the first few months of 2002. Wisden.com had started offering video coverage of Indian cricket through a deal with the rights holder, the Indian national broadcaster Doordarshan. A pay-per-view video service began during the India- England one-day series in January and - amid Freddie Flintoff 's shirttwirling heroics - twice found 1,000 customers willing to pay £10 a game. This appeared to the management to offer a more lucrative way forward. In November 2002, they abandoned the yearly subscription, merely asking readers to register before they enjoyed what was still, under the determined editorship of Steven Lynch, a consistent service.

While Wisden licked its wounds, troubles were mounting at CricInfo, the world's most popular single-sports website, whose awesome record in attracting users was matched only by the debts it had built up.

CricInfo was born in 1993, the brainchild of a young British scientist, Dr Simon King. Stranded at the University of Minnesota, King used the fledgling internet to cure his homesickness by creating a site which allowed him to follow Middlesex and England from afar. His ferocious determination attracted others who shared his obsessive commitment to making CricInfo the online home of the game. The world's cricket fans, especially expatriate Indians, flocked to the site. In 2000, CricInfo launched as a commercial operation on the back of a US$37.5 million investment which valued it at US$150 million. It was, in the words of the Financial Times, "one of the biggest, sexiest dotcoms".

A year of craziness followed in which CricInfo spent money like water and even ended up sponsoring the County Championship. But the internet bubble had burst and CricInfo's investors were getting nervous. In 2001, in a foreshadowing of Wisden.com's sudden switch of strategy, the backers demanded that costs were cut and more money made. Simon King, who had fallen out with his fellow directors, found himself sidelined, and a few months later he resigned.

CricInfo's battle-scarred team struggled on, constantly searching for ways to make their huge traffic pay. In 2002, they added four different betting services to the site, upgraded the online equipment and video shop, and introduced a "global" mobile-phone score update service. They also introduced a subscription of their own, CricInfo Plus, which did not rope off an area of the site (a labour-intensive business, requiring a restructuring) but charged $12 a year for faster access to pages that could be clogged by their own popularity, especially when India were playing. About 5,000 users paid up, but the company was still only just breaking even: not much use if you have debts of more than £1.5 million.

CricInfo's approach was far removed from that of Wisden.com, but mutual need was about to force them together. CricInfo needed investment, and dotcoms were about as attractive to commercial investors as a trip to Harare. Wisden.com had fewer worries about money - thanks to the wealth of Wisden's owner, Sir Paul Getty - but with an audience five per cent CricInfo's, it was in danger of sliding into cyber-obscurity, which would have been a sad fate for a site bearing cricket's most venerated brand.

Talks began in the autumn, and concluded in late February 2003 with Wisden purchasing a controlling stake in CricInfo for a sum that it agreed not to disclose, although speculation appeared in the papers. The new company, Wisden CricInfo, pledged to combine the "editorial flair" of Wisden with the "extraordinary breadth" of CricInfo. It did not, however, plan to spend much money.

The biggest challenge was likely to lie in maintaining the character of two very distinctive sites with sometimes conflicting values. A Wisden editorial railing against the evils of match-fixing may seem a little incongruous next to an offer to take your pick from four betting services.

Equally, CricInfo's approach of covering every international match could clash with Wisden's more choosy approach, although the management stressed that the policy remained the same - to cover what the site could afford. And then there are the two readerships, overlapping but plainly not identical. In the run-up to the World Cup, Wisden's core users would have been on tenterhooks over England's agonising about Zimbabwe, while the majority of CricInfo's vast audience would have been more exercised about the sponsorship row over the Indian players' contracts.

Wisden CricInfo hoped to turn two struggling businesses into a profitmaking one, by cutting running costs and exploiting the combined strengths of the two sites to produce a more compelling draw for advertisers and users alike. Advertising, betting and content syndication would provide revenue streams, but subscription was also expected to play a part.

It is video and audio content which the punter is most used to being asked to pay for. And it is here that the internet may finally deliver fully on its promise to provide truly interactive coverage of the game.

Each recent World Cup has driven more cricket fans to the internet to keep track of their team. CricInfo's growth underwent huge spurts in 1996 and 1999, propelling it into the major investment league, spicing up the sponsorship and internet-rights markets and driving the early development of online video and audio services. The 2003 World Cup did not provide the explosion of internet video expected by some, because the television broadcasters with rights to the American, British and Australian markets were careful to make sure their deals included internet rights. But the CricketNext site was able to offer live coverage of the tournament to those living in 96 countries outside cricket's prime markets for around £150.

Video streaming through the internet has been restricted by three factors - the shortage of broadband access outside the USA, which makes the pictures slow and jerky; the inflated price of video rights, and the high costs of supplying the feed. However, broadband access is now becoming more widespread in the UK and some other westernised countries, while still a long way off in India. The price of video internet rights has collapsed from the dotcom peak and the economics have been further transformed by a combination of new editing software, slicker billing mechanisms and a dramatic reduction in the cost of streaming (broadcasting to the computer screen). It now appears possible to charge a dollar a day for video coverage and achieve a healthy margin - as long as people sign up.

The viewing experience could also be refashioned, thanks to affordable editing software. Both CricInfo and the US broadband broadcaster Willow TV have experimented with an interactive scorecard - simply click on a "4" and see Hayden bully Caddick through the covers, click on a "W" and see England take their revenge. Wisden offered a twist on this by presenting a timeline which picked out other pivotal moments, such as disputed umpiring decisions. All this could be reviewed as many times as the viewer wished. The day is not far off when one fan will be able to email another with a clip of Brett Lee bowling Brian Lara.