New online scoring system in place

COMMUNITY cricket is moving to a new online scoring system this summer.

PlayHQ is replacing CricHQ as the official platform.

The national rollout is being led by New Zealand Cricket, but Otago Cricket Association competitions manager Nic Kittelty is the association lead and said reaction in Otago to the change had been good.

‘‘Our rollout in Otago has been really positive. The clubs have been very receptive of the change, and registrations would support that,’’ Kittelty said.

‘‘The cool or exciting thing about PlayHQ, although it is still so new in its development, is in a short period of time it will far exceed what CricHQ was able to offer for us.

‘‘Keep in mind we were with CricHQ for eight years and we were still having ongoing functionality issues every season.’’

Green Island Cricket Club secretary Jeremy Scott and CarisbrookDunedin Kaikorai Cricket Club vicepresident

Charlie Hantler had no serious complaints.

Scott set they were still in the setup phase, but the system had functioned well for registrations and taking payments.

‘‘I have not heard any grumbles. The only concern for Green Island is I’m the man in charge of it,’’ Scott joked.

Hantler said the registration process had been a breeze and the system was very ‘‘userfriendly’’.

‘‘The only concern I have is if there is an app available or not,’’ Hantler said.

‘‘For CricHQ, there was an app which we could use on our tablets for scoring at games, and I’m not aware of an app for PlayHQ at the moment.

‘‘That could be a potential issue in terms of being able to use it without data or hotspotting.’’

One concerned parent, who wanted to remain anonymous, described the system as ‘‘a crock’’.

‘‘I’ve been on a couple of calls — they tell us Australia used it successfully — but there is no DLS [DuckworthLewis

Stern], no leaderboards and player stats,’’ he said.

‘‘People are spitting dummy.’’

Kittelty said the scoring system did incorporate DLS adjustments into targets, but there was no inbuilt calculator yet.

Work is under way to include a calculator in the scoring application, and PlayHQ has targeted its release for midNovember.

There were no firm plans, though, to develop an app, Kittelty said. the

‘‘The E [electronic] scoring platform, in terms of that being exposed to the public, is in its early days. Sessions have only just begun in the last three to four weeks,’’ Kittelty said.

‘‘PlayHQ, as a platform, has about 80 software developers working on it and 11 of those are dedicated to cricket, whereas CricHQ had only one developer on it.

‘‘There are fortnightly software updates in which the platform regularly improves itself, and we’ve already seen some great enhancements.’’