Q Ahmed: Wired World Of Cricket (10 Mar 1997)

10 March 1997

`Wired` world of cricket

Qamar Ahmed

The modern day world is now wired through the advent of hightech. The beaming of events through satellite, the cable channels have made the world shrink even to the extent that now if you have facilities available, then you need not step out of your own sitting room and you watch the world go by.

Cricket is one sport which has its own intriguing and exciting web-site on the Internet. The most interesting being `Cricinfo`, the self proclaimed "Home of cricket on the Internet".

This British-based site is the 39th largest Web site and the third largest sports site with the potential of being a genuine force for providing information on cricket news, features and the ever changing enjoyable statistics on the game, to the people interested even in the parts where cricket is not played and people are anxious to find out as to what happened in a Test at Karachi or Kandy.

A great majority of information that is on the Internet through various Web sites are provided by mostly the cricket enthusiasts. It will also provide you a new perspective on the game if you would think of finding out whether cricket is played in Timbactoo or under the Rock of Gibraltar.

The Australian Cricket Page, South Australian Library`s Bradman` site or West Indian Tony Cozier`s online version on his site, `Cricket`, are all those sites which are full of interest and anecdotes and stories to thrill a cricket buff. Cricinfo had Bradman`s Test record match by match and all the detail that one would like to know about his career at all levels.

Did you know that a cricketer has won a Nobel Prize? Through Cricinfo`s on-line cricket magazine `Googler`s Gazette` I found that out that the Irish author Samuel Beckett was the one who did. A left-handed opener and medium-pace bowler for Dublin University, Beckett in his only two first class games in 1925 and 1926 made very humble contribution but as a writer Beckett was Nobel Laureate.

Just zip across the `Coopers and Lybrand` which gives rating to the players of the game and you would find the latest rankings. Whether Wasim Akaram is heading the averages or Glen McGrath or Saeed Anwar amongst the batsmen, is on top of Steve Wough or Greg Blewett.

Get into the system and you will browse throw a heap of information of Pakistan players and their profiles, as would you find on the pages of newspaper on the Internet.

Source :: Dawn (https://xiber.com/dawn)