HCL and Cricket Australia reveal the winners of TechJam 2021
Cricket Carnival has been named the winner of this year’s cricket-focused TechJam hosted by HCL and Cricket Australia.
The winners have been announced for this year’s TechJam hosted by tech services firm HCL in conjunction with Cricket Australia – with ‘Cricket Carnival’ claiming the $15,000 major prize “for breaking down the complex game into its basic elements and using local initiatives to rejuvenate people’s engagement with the game.” Cricket Australia will look to implement the winning solutions into its technology ecosytem.
“Focusing on how digital solutions can help us to truly understand and engage the cricket community is integral to creating memorable experiences and ramping up game performance,” said Mike Osborne, Cricket Australia’s General Manager of Technology, who was a former global director of technology at Deloitte. “We’re thrilled to see how data-led insights and digital methodologies can act as a multiplier of the fans’ and players’ love of the game.”
With $40,000 in total prizes up for grabs, the global crowdsourcing event invited participants to forward technology-led solutions in the areas of player and team performance, fan engagement, and community engagement, with the aim of pushing boundaries of innovation in cricket and enhancing experiences for the global cricket community. Entries were judged on technical execution, innovation, and their merit as a solution.
The TechJam finalists presented to a large panel of experts and industry leaders from HCL, Cricket Australia, Microsoft and a number of other partners via a live hook-up, with the first runner-up prize – worth $10,000 – going to AI-powered cricket coaching platform Ludimos “for making learning cricket a fun and interactive experience while boosting coaching efficiency.” Ludimos pairs video analysis with tracking tools and online access to top coaches.
The third prize was awarded to Crickey Cricket – “for creating a unique fan experience by combining blockchain and non-fungible tokens as collectibles, data analytics and modelling” – while other category winners included Switch n Swift, which designed a prototype of a system that automatically covers the entire field in the event of rain, and Spolib, which created a digital marketplace to connect athletes and coaches.
“The HCL and Cricket Australia partnership has magnified opportunities for technology to play a more pivotal role in enhancing cricket nationally and globally,” said Michael Horton, HCL Executive Vice President & Country Manager for Australia & New Zealand. “We look forward to continuing to exemplify how digital transformation can uplift fan engagement and player performance in exciting new ways through our collaborative efforts.”
In other news, Cricket Australia last month engaged the services of international sports marketing and consulting firm Octagon to advise on its North American and Caribbean media rights, while in May former PwC assistant director Nick Hockley was confirmed as full-time CEO. The administrator of Australian cricket also continues to work with BCG on a national cricket strategy, with the firm having been involved at the international level for more than a decade.
