SCORERS: UPDATES ON CricHQ,TCS and PLAY-CRICKET

Date: 14th March 2017

The LG L&DCC advises its scorers in all their many different situations to do three simple things before the season starts:

1. Monitor their own situation carefully if they use TCS V8/7 or older in the next few weeks to see if their links to play cricket remain intact.

If they do, all well and good but a new Live update licence for 2017 will also need to be purchased if those again become available this year. There seems to be no guarantee of that at the moment.

If these play-cricket links to older versions of TCS also become broken by CricHQ, continuing to use TCS will mean manually downloading teams and manually uploading scorecards back to play-cricket.

2. Users of TCS V8 might also consider unchecking the box in “settings” that allows TCS to auto-update V8 to “Version 9” as V9 will seemingly now not be linked to play cricket as set out in detail below.

3. Have a really good look at the ECB App. http://www.play-cricket.com/updates it's now in the App stores and available for free download

It’s a proven product – it’s been used for some years “down under”.

It’s simple to use, no additional training is needed, its very intuitive.

It’s completely free

It runs on any Android or iOS ‘phones or, better still because they’re bigger, on Android/iOS tablets. It doesn’t need a fancy phone or tablet.

It’s fully play cricket compliant i.e. both up and down loading is free and works

It’s got built in free Live Update

It’s got built in free Duckworth Lewis.

It will not (currently) do wagon wheels.

Perhaps try it on a game on TV before the season starts,

To keep us all really up to date, the following and additional information from ECB ACO has also been received:

“In summary, ECB ACO as of yet, has not been able to have a conversation with CricHQ to either address the data feed from TCS to Play-Cricket, nor some frequently asked questions of clarification over what will happen with TCS in 2017.

There are ongoing attempts to have that conversation.

In the meantime, for questions of clarification around CricHQ products, including TCS, ECB ACO urges us to advise users to contact support@totalcricketscorer.com, as user influence might well help speed up clarification.

ECB has not been able to reach reasonable commercial terms with CricHQ to enable the exchange of data between CricHQ and Play-Cricket. It is fair to say that there is some distance between what both parties believe are reasonable terms, the ECB cannot agree to terms they consider unreasonable that will take money away from other important areas of the game.

It is also worth clarifying that data will not flow from the CricHQ platform into Play-Cricket as CricHQ have stated. CricHQ have everything they need to enable this, but Play-Cricket is not receiving their scorecards in the correct format.

For the 2017 season, as things stand today, this is how people might consider preparing:

1. Scorers who are laptop users

CricHQ say that you’ll need to upgrade from TCS v8 to v9. Whether you need to in reality is a different matter. But CricHQ have confirmed you need to upgrade, and if you’re a TCS user, there is a licence agreement to be aware of http://www.totalcricketscorer.com/TCSWeb/TCSTerms.aspx

If you use TCS v9 you will need to manually update scorecards into Play-Cricket. It’s not yet clear if CricHQ will enable TCS v9 users to download fixtures from Play-Cricket, although they can access the data if they want to.

2. Scorers who are not laptop users

If you open to using a tablet or phone, you may use Play-Cricket Scorer www.play-cricket.com/updates for free. It will be live in the app store by April (currently due 16^th March), using very similar technology being used to score some Sheffield Shield game in Australia, as well as their recreational cricket.

3. Unofficiated cricket

The vast majority of recreational cricket is un-officiated and captains and players will be able to use Play-Cricket Scorer from a tablet or mobile.

It is possible to find more detail in the email that was sent to ACO member last Friday afternoon

http://ecb-aco.co.uk/t/1FZA-4TD3A-C07FE7XF8A/cr.aspx

“Dear Association.

You may have received a statement from CricHQ informing you of certain changes to the way in which Total Cricket Scorer (TCS) will operate and particularly in respect of the upgrade to V#9.

Here is a short summary designed to give you more information about the current situation:

The integration between TCS and Play-Cricket is already in place. It's an API setup by the ECB to enable download and upload of fixtures and scorecards - this is what happens with TCS V#8
CricHQ own TCS. The ECB and CricHQ have not been able to reach reasonable commercial terms for the ongoing sharing of data from CricHQ V#9 to Play-Cricket. As a result, there will be no feed for TCS V#9 Click here to view an FAQ document

To give you some background, during the winter ECB ran a tender process for http://www.play-cricket.com/updates - a new scoring App that will be introduced this season. After a fair and robust tender process, ECB decided to move forward with a different provider. With the aim to get more people interested and involved in the art of scoring.

Therefore if you’re comfortable scoring with a mobile phone or tablet, http://www.play-cricket.com/updates is a free option that will automatically upload game data (including team and player statistics) to Play-Cricket. A similar version is used in state cricket in Australia - you could find it to be a really great solution.

You will be notified when the app is available in the Google Play (Android devices) and App Store (Apple devices), this is expected imminently.

ECB ACO hopes this provides you with more clarity on the current situation.