Not only has Intel Corp taken over this season’s provision of computer assistance for the BBC’s cricket coverage from Compagnie des Machines Bull SA (CI No 2,172), it also intends make cricket easier for the layman to understand. The aim is to provide graphical representations of statistics and three-dimensional histograms of, for example, a particular batsman or bowler’s performance, real-time, as the commentator speaks. An 80486DX/2 file server will be used as a central repository for information fed in from about half a dozen nodes. Each node will supply information relating to different elements of a commentator’s presentation, such as the scoreboard or the line and length of a ball being pitched. The file server will then analyse the data and generate rolling statistics, converting them into graphics for the television director to use immediately on the screen. No further technical or financial details were available, but the system – in use for the Texaco Trophy one-day internationals, which started with a win for Australia by four runs on Thursday – will be officially launched at the start of the first Test Match against the Australians at Old Trafford in Manchester on June 3. In return for all this, Intel gets a six-second screening of its logo four times every quarter of an hour when the scorecard is shown. According to the group’s calculations, between 3m and 4.5m viewers watch cricket on a daily basis, rising to 6m at peak time. So, the advertising, seen as an extension of the Intel Inside campaign, should reach about 85% of sociological class A and B men, otherwise known as professionals and managers. And, of course, these are the people, who would generally make the decisions about whether to use Intel kit or not. Bull’s most recent three-year contract with the intermediaries, Ted Dexter Associates Ltd, expired at the end of last season, and the company decided that despite its long association with the game – after all it was the pioneer of computer-aided sports coverage, since extended to almost every conceivable sport and all round the globe, when it teamed up with the Beeb for cricket at the end of the 1970s, it could no longer afford to provide the service. It says that the cost of making three or four employees available to man the computer for 40 days’ cricket a season, covering all their travel and accomodation expenses, ran into six figures.
