Indian connections
170,000 — Indian population in New Zealand. About 4 per cent of the population. 46,000 Indian visitors to NZ in 2015, with 50,000 Kiwis going to India. 1/10th — the size of NZ’s trade with India compared with China. the rest in the United Kingdom, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa and Canada.
It started as a cloud-based cricket scoring app, but has expanded into competition management, administration and a scoreboard and statistics platform as well as data collection and predictive scoring.
Loftus said the data and analytical aspect was particularly appealing to Indians.
When an academy signs on, every member can view their own statistics, displayed in match reports, wagonwheels showing shot selection and other graphs.
More importantly, it allows selectors to sift through match data to find Tendulkar gold.
“You can not only see that [ a player] scored 100, but you can also see where he scored his runs, what sort of bowling and all sorts of things. You can then start to make choices about, was it a decent 100 or was it all edged through slip, sort of thing,” Loftus said.
“Because undoubtedly they’ve got Tendulkars and Sehwags and Kohlis playing in the provinces at the moment who for whatever reason don’t get identified . . . they are really keen to try and break the mold of what has traditionally been the pathway for Indian players.
“Once the door is open . . . we can get our message across a little bit more than having someone who is starstruck.”
CricHQ is also set to launch a function that livestreams matches, with players and coaches able to call up specified highlights packages from footage — for example, asking for one that includes all fours, sixes and wickets.
Loftus said there was only one other company offering similar services for cricketers. That was Interact Sports in Australia, but it covered only competition management and registrations.
CricHQ raised US$10 million from a Singaporean investment fund last year and is working at speed to sign up associations around the world — although in India urgency has proved to have natural limits.
“The big thing is that whole having patience . . . we have a saying within the team, TII — This Is India,” Loftus said.
“There are things that are very peculiar to Indian culture and society. You’re not going to change that; you have to live with it.”