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The State Championship Final between the State Auckland Aces and the State Central Stags has attracted worldwide interest thanks to exclusive coverage on New Zealand Cricket’s official website.
State Championship Final - Follow, Watch, Listen »
Cricket lovers across the globe have gone online to follow the fortunes of the two sides battling for supremacy in the domestic cricket showpiece being staged at the High Performance Centre, Lincoln.
The growth of internet based coverage of domestic cricket means that public interest can now be measured by a more accurate tool than simply crowd attendance. Domestic cricket plays a crucial development role within cricket, providing emerging players and BLACKCAPS contenders with robust, testing cricket in various forms throughout each summer of cricket.
The appearance in the final of a plethora of current, former and aspiring BLACKCAPS demonstrates the vital role the domestic competitions play in preparing the country’s finest players for the international arena. This is reflected in the huge interest in the STATE domestic competitions through new media.
During the first day of play in the 2008-09 State Championship final, more than 17,500 people followed live scoring covered on www.blackcaps.co.nz. The match is not only being live scored, but the website is carrying live audio commentary from Radio Sport as well as daily television highlights packages, which are provided in conjunction with SKY Television.
"These new innovations make our domestic cricket accessible worldwide and the demand for coverage and information has been huge throughout the season. Not everyone can get along to watch the live action but they can follow it ball by ball through live scoring and now with audio commentary and video highlights.” said NZC Commercial Manager, Peter Dwan
“Our website statistics from a number of seasons confirm that the viewing audience for domestic cricket always far exceeds the public attendance at such matches. Interest in domestic cricket is huge and it is growing which is great news for the game and our commercial partners. We are now working hard with our broadcast partners to deliver more and more coverage of domestic cricket via our website to satisfy the demand that is there," he said.
32,000 people followed the progress of India’s Rahul Dravid towards a century when he played a four day for State Canterbury Wizard’s in a State Championship game, underlining the importance of online cricket services. Overall, in the first three months of 2009 www.blackcaps.co.nz received over 8 million page views.
