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Don't be afraid of the world wide web

By most measures, cricket is an old fashioned sport. The premium form of the sport consists of contests that last five days and even the shortest format lasts longer than most full matches in other major team sports. The club/franchise culture is just about starting to catch on, especially when compared to the likes of football. Its also one of the few outdoor sports that is affected by (and leaves itself open to be affected by) the elements. So as Dave Hawksworth points out in this blog post, its not a real surprise that its been slow to embrace the internet.

As I see it, there's two barriers or problems that have prevented this. First, most forward thinking organisations these days have a dedicated team that focuses on digital and new media, whether it be getting content online, creating a social media presence or marketing themselves. Most cricket boards across the world and the ICC don't really have such dedicated teams or if they do (like the ECB) they don't do a good enough job of raising awareness amongst fans. The second issue that slows things down is the fact that a lot of senior management across both cricket administrations and their broadcasting partners belong to the "old media" world and as such are afraid of the internet and the changes it might bring along (reduced incomes, increased transparency etc). This second issue is not unique to the world of cricket by any means and is something that lots of organisations, newspapers and TV companies being amongst the foremost, are having to deal with at the moment. Given (as Dave points out) that these two account for the bulk of cricket's presence in the media today, its not surprising that the internet revolution has yet to hit the game. Change can't be resisted forever though so the sooner the fear is shed the better.

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