This week we saw the US tech consortium purchase 49% stake in the London Spirit, valuing the team at £300M. The group is backed Nikesh Arora and Satyan Gajwani, but the buzz has been created as leaders such as Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google) , Shantanu Narayen (Adobe) and Egon Durban (Silver Lake Technology) are also known to be part of this consortium. Nadella and Pichai have often expressed their love for the game and I’m sure apart from commercial value they also have personal interests and their passion for the sport. This deal also highlights that the sport could be a great avenue to test many new technologies to transform the sport and in 5-10 years time.

I want to briefly look at the 3 important stakeholders in the game and how their role has changed and how it could be transformed further in the future.

The Use of technology so Far

Umpiring – The advent of televisions and the 3rd umpire seemed revolutionary during the 80s and 90s. We have since evolved to the decision review system in the last 15 years with technologies such as Hawkeye, Snicko, Ultra-edge etc from “lets get rid of the howler” to “lets ensure we get more accurate decisions all the time”. This has also added a different flavour to the game, for the players and the fans and overall has made cricket a better sport.

Players/Coaching – Technology has completely transformed the cricket player of today. Right from analysing their performance, their injuries, equipment, gameplay strategy, data driven insights and AI are now table stakes for all professional cricketers not just at the international level. The integration of IOT and real time data analytics has really helped players get more professional and structured in how they go about improving their games. Sides such as England, Australia were perhaps one of the first to go all out on metrics driven and data back strategy. Satya’s old article in cricinfo popped up recently where he said “Take Steve Smith’s record from when he was a schoolboy cricketer. Every match is digitised, so they now have a digital twin of Steve’s career, which can then be used not only to improve his own performance but to identity the next Steve Smith. The degree to which technology can now get used so broadly is exciting. We should not shy away from technology and technology change throwing up new challenges. One of the things that has made cricket such an enduring sport is the variability of it“. The sky is clearly the limit here.

Fan Experience Digital tools over the last decade have added a lot to the fans. With data playing playing a crucial foundational role in powering front end apps etc. The ICC (International Cricket Council) have invested heavily in digital. They have been using the SAP Hana Cloud and lumira for a number of years to collect, analyse data and update within seconds of live play. Of course in play highlights, stats, polls, etc have really kept us all super engaged through any game of cricket. It would of course be a miss if I don’t mention marketing and advertising. In tournaments like the IPL, Virat Kohli appears on screen and a brand he endorses appear with an in play advertisement, small anecdotes such as this are all possible to due AI.

What more can we expect?

Umpiring – In the short term the predictive models of technologies for Hawkeye will improve and we will start to veer away from things like umpires call. Could we see umpires replaced one day with a robot? There are already a number of areas where the role of the umpire starts to become redundant such no balls, wides, maybe even run outs which can be automated decisions driven by AI, i wont be surprised if we have a fully automates third umpire in the next few years. On field umpires, might take a little longer.

Players/Coaching – I feel data analytics using AI have become table stakes. I feel what is going to really change is the rate of adoption of using this technology in the next generation. The current set of top players have been part of this transition and so they pick and choose what tech they want to use. There is still some apprehension on wearing devices, or using tech during rehabilitation. The incoming generation of cricketer will first go to the tech, and then probably ask their coach. I also feel scouting of players will be AI data driven to make the selection pool even wider when it comes to age group teams, franchises, or when there are specific metrics that a team is looking for. Again this is something which is being leveraged, but adoption will definitely scale.

Fan Experience Augmented Reality is going to be the next big thing in sport not just cricket. At the last T20 world cup the ICC launched the ICC immersive app allowing fans to step into match situations using the apple vision pro. This is a part of the game where the likes of Microsoft, Google with more primary data at their finger tips could revolutionise the AR space where we can feel the atmosphere of the stadium sitting in our homes.

Technology and cricket landscapes are both moving at a fast pace, and as a fan I look forward to a flourishing partnership on and off the field.