Cricket Australia extends HCL partnership for further five years
A digital transformation partner since 2019, tech consultancy HCLTech has extended its agreement with Cricket Australia for a further five years, with Cricket Live app enhancements on the agenda.
Cricket Australia has extended its partnership agreement with Indian-headquartered technology consultancy HCLTech for a further five years, as the national sporting body embarks on the next phase of its digital transformation of cricket.
HCLTech will support Cricket Australia’s long-term strategy to deliver immersive digital experiences for stakeholders across the cricketing spectrum, including players, fans and volunteers.
“Engagement with our fans and community is of the utmost importance for Cricket Australia,” stated Donald Elliott, Cricket Australia’s general manager of technology.
“We are focused on keeping people engaged in the sport from the moment they first pick up a bat and ball or watch a game. The extension of this partnership and the world-class technology it provides will help cricket maintain and improve its place as the leading sport in the country.”
Elliot further noted HCLTech’s support to date, including the transformation of Cricket Australia’s tech stack and digital assets such as cricket.com.au and the Cricket Australia Live app, which is the top summer sporting application in the country with annual sessions now in excess of 100 million and a store rating of 4.7 stars, up from 2.2 over the course of the partnership. HCLTech has also helped digitise and streamline a number of community cricket processes.
Now, the tech consulting and services firm will be tasked with implementing a range of innovative new features to further enhance both Cricket Australia Live and the community cricket app PlayCricket and ensure the digital experience remains at the forefront for fans, participants, coaches and other other support staff, including through the deployment of DevOps, automation, analytics and AI & machine learning technologies.
“We are excited to have been chosen as a digital transformation partner once again by Cricket Australia,” stated Michael Horton, HCLTech’s country manager for Australia and New Zealand. “Technology is transforming how we access and engage with sports and HCLTech is committed to delivering future-ready solutions to support their objective to deliver seamless experiences to its stakeholders and communities.”
HCLTech and Cricket Australia will also continue to collaborate on the global ‘TechJam’ crowdsourcing initiative in association with Microsoft, which brings together data scientists, developers, tech innovators and sports enthusiasts from across the world to uncover fresh, tech-oriented solutions for Australian cricket. The 2021 iteration received over 80,000 entries, with the ultimate prize awarded to IoT-based app ‘Cricket Carnival’.
