One of the problems that cricket fanatics face is searching for information about their favourite team or player. Getting statistics about runs scored or wickets taken is easy but other information such as trivia or interesting facts related to a match is difficult to fetch. A fan may want to know “Which bowler bowled the most maidens in an IPL season?” or another query as “Which team conceded the least extras?”
To put an end to such difficulties ESPNcricinfo is launching its brand new search tool called AskCricinfo services. What this natural language search engine would do is enable fans to access all kinds of trivia questions. A user can type or speak out his/her question and AskCricinfo will be able to return them to the desired output.
The first phase of the AskCricinfo services will be started by ESPN and the language will have to be English. They will be covering T20 facts from tournaments such as IPL, BBL, CPL, PSL, T20 Blast, BPL, T20 Internationals and Women’s T20 internationals. The new application will combine facts from StatsGuru and use the next-gen technology AI to get facts from the databases. Further down the line they also plan to incorporate other formats of the game with different languages.
“This is the first step towards what could be significant in making cricket stats accessible on demand. ESPNcricinfo’s Statsguru has been the default stats query tool for professionals and stats enthusiasts for years, but AskCricinfo is an attempt to unlock our data vault for everyone. It is very much a work in progress, and it cannot yet answer everything, but like all tools powered by artificial intelligence it will get better and better with use. Therefore, we urge cricket fans to use it in the spirit of collaboration, and of course, for fun,” said Sambit Bal, Editor-in-chief ESPNcricinfo.
“The vision for AskCricinfo is to be the one-stop companion application for cricket fans, gamers, players, analysts and officials to query for data insights and any information on cricket. We have made a small beginning of this with the launch of the first phase of the product offering, and in the coming months, will be building additional features in this application, besides advanced querying capabilities. Fans will have unrestricted access to use this service for a limited period and we will be making strategic partnerships with other platforms to ensure as wide a reach for this,” said Ramesh Kumar, VP & Head of ESPN India & South Asia.