Coming soon: the new Cricinfo

Unbeknownst to you, Cricinfo has been changing. Or let me put it another way: for over a year now Cricinfo has been busy trying to make itself worthier of your time and attention.

On the face of it, you could call it a redesign. But it goes much deeper. Perhaps re-engineering would be more appropriate. To us, it's been a process of enrichment and renewal. Design, after all, isn't merely about looking good; it's about what works well.

In my years as a professional journalist and editor, I have watched from close quarters and been involved in the design and redesign of newspapers, magazines and websites. Each is a distinctly unique challenge. Newspaper designs are about the optimal use of space and creating multiple points of interest on a single page; magazines, particularly features magazines, are usually more richly visual, and their design affords the luxury of creativity and experimentation. In scale and complexity, though, nothing comes close to designing a website.

Building a website goes far beyond visual appeal. All design is part art and part science: designing for the web is a synthesis of logic, communication, technological possibilities and visual presentation. It's about creating an architecture that is intricate, interlinked, flexible and robust. The bigger the site, the more complex the challenge. Not for a moment did we underestimate the task of redesigning Cricinfo, but while we were at it, it seemed to grow every day.

The site was last redesigned in 2003, when Wisden acquired it. That was meant to be a holding job, the primary objective of which was to merge Cricinfo and wisden.com. As we focused on enhancing the site's content, a full-fledged redesign kept getting pushed back.

Over the last six years, we have been adding features and sections. Blogs came in 2005; audio in 2006; in 2007 we created a magazine section to showcase our features content; Cricinfo TV came in 2008; and just last month we launched Page 2. Some of these sections acquired their own look and flavour, but we knew we needed a design that reflecting our growth and our ambitions. Also, as part of the ESPN family of sites, we needed a more integrated approach.

It's been a long, arduous, contentious and painstaking process. It has involved hundreds of iterations, many arguments, and hours and hours in meeting rooms and on conference calls. But it's been a rewarding journey. In some ways, it has allowed us to rediscover the site and put us in touch with the fundamentals that make Cricinfo the world's favourite and most trusted cricket website.

We are now ready to share the new Cricinfo with you. Well, almost. As I write this, our production team is busy exterminating pesky bugs that spring up the moment others of their kind are taken care of. The job has been humongous, and there would be something wrong if there weren't a few glitches.

As the countdown to next week's launch begins, we feel a surge of excitement. We also feel a bit of nervousness and panic. If we didn't, it would mean we didn't care.