By Anil - June 28, '02
June 28 2002

Cricinfo appears to have lost its neutrality, and appears to be partial to a certain section of the cricketing fraternity. Can this be good for the "home of cricket on the Internet"? The origins

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Cricinfo originated as a group of fans comprising largely Indians with a web site (in those days referred to by different names), who attempted to keep the expat community informed about cricket happenings. With the advent of the Internet, Cricinfo took off in a big way and has now become a web-based corporation generating hundreds of millions of hits every month. It has become a serious revenue generator as well as a neutral information dissemination tool. There is also a wealth of information available on Cricinfo including several decades worth of information about every international and most first-class matches, schedules of series being played, articles, Cricket rules, analytical tools that are usable by any fan to gather any number of statistics, etc. In short it has become an invaluable resource for the cricket lover.

Leanings

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However, these days Cricinfo increasingly looks as if it is being used as a media tool, propagating a point of view that favors one school of thought and opposes another. Cricinfo writers from certain countries are allowed to write and publish whatever they feel like, no matter how biased, whereas journalists from other countries appear muzzled to the point of being prevented from speaking out about issues important to their country, and apparently encouraged to write articles and views which are even contrary to those positions.

Think about it. How many anti-Mike Deness articles were found in Cricinfo at the height of the controversial actions of this match referee? The answer is none. How many articles with a tone critical of Jagmohan Dalmiya, the influential head of Indian cricket? Numerous - even when he was ICC chief. (Hence a conclusion that it's only ICC-biased would be simplistic.) Dalmiya has been repeatedly and severely castigated by Cricinfo over the years, with their Indian journalists always joining in enthusiastically. How many anti-Sourav Ganguly articles? Many, even taboid-style ones. How many anti-Steve Waugh? None.

The customers

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Ironically, there are numerous product ads on the Cricinfo site that are targetted at Indians. The reason is obvious, a large portion of the hundreds of millions of site hits are generated by fans from that country. In fact, Cricinfo is partially owned by Satyam, an Indian company. Most for-profit corporations financed by a group of people will usually bend over backwards to accomodate that group. In the case of Cricinfo, the exact opposite is happening. What gives?

As cricket fans, we would certainly like to see more neutral positions from our favorite cricket site, and more views sympathetic to other countries rather than centric to only the traditional two who have controlled the game in decades past. It's a new world and cricket's center of gravity is fast moving East. If Cricinfo doesn't come around, perhaps it is time for an Indian version of Cricinfo which has all of the information in the current one, but does a better job of serving (and not alienating) those fans who largely finance world cricket.