THE Sunraysia Cricket Association (SCA) has taken a big step into the digital age with the donation of tablet devices to its clubs.
Mildura’s annual Willowfest Australian Cricket Club Championships has donated eight Android tablets – worth about $3000 in total – to SCA clubs, which is set to save them money and enable live scoring during local games.
Clubs can now upload match information and scores themselves, rather than relying on the SCA to manually input data from the 29 games across all grades after the completion of play.
The benefits of time saved by the association will flow to clubs in reduced expenses. Clubs currently pay administration fees to the SCA to cover an estimated 14-20 hours of data entry each week.
The tablets will also be used for online updates during the Willowfest championships, which take place in the SCA competition summer break.
The Willowfest constitution dictates all profits made from the championships are invested back into local cricket.
“If you go back 20 years, Willowfest used to provide funds for turf wickets, scoreboards, sight screens,” Willowfest president Anthony Telfer said.
“(Since then), it has been tough financially and we’re now starting to make some profits again, only because of really good support from our sponsors.”
These Tablets will also be available for teams during the Willowfest carnival to also do live scoring.
SCA administration manager Peter Hahn said the tablets would initially be used for first and second division matches for the remainder of the season to allow the association to identify and monitor any issues that arise.
The system will then be implemented across the senior divisions next season and the SCA hopes it will eventually expand to include all grades.
“Once they get the proper training, I believe the clubs will be able to take it up and run with it. Eventually, it will save the clubs a considerable amount of money,” Hahn said.
“The extra traffic we’ll get through the apps and through the websites will help bolster the sponsorship, which is key to keeping costs low for clubs.”
Cricket Victoria’s (CV) MyCricket co-ordinator Simon Webb held a training session last night to teach clubs how to use the new tablets and upload match information.
“It does seem to be that the country associations lead the way in taking on these initiatives and moving forward with the new technology, which is really great to see,” Webb said.
By Andrew Brookes – Sunraysia Daily
