U

Usenet

A precursor of the World Wide Web, Usenet was a popular means of distributing information on the internet. It was essentially a massive collection of newsgroups, each dealing with a specific subject. One such group, created in 1990 - rec.sport.cricket - went on to play a major role in the evolution of ball-by-ball cricket commentary. It was here that Robert Elz, an Australian, posted scorecards and reports of the Australia-India series in 1991-92. These over-by-over entries evolved into ball-by-ball descriptions.