English cricket has undergone the most dramatic transformation in recent years. On the field, the England team has beaten the best in the world and the domestic game has been revitalised by a series of exciting innovations.  

The Online Challenge

Off the field the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has worked hard to make the most of the playing success by raising their public profile. One of the key features is a new-look website, completely revamped to help drive the development of a game on the move.

The site - www.ecb.co.uk - delivers all the news and the action
from the country and the counties.

It keeps fans up to date with matches on the other side of the world and with grassroots initiatives on their doorstep. It is informative, entertaining and easy to navigate. It has generated a huge increase in traffic levels.

The ECB decided early in 2004 to overhaul its website, which was limited in content scope and visitor numbers. The aim of the revamp was to produce a market-leading website that reflected the ECB's position as one of the foremost sports governing bodies in the UK.

Design and structure of the site were obviously important factors. On the editorial side, the aim was to provide quality coverage of the game at all levels and act as a showcase for all the ECB's initiatives and activities.  

While the site needed to be informative, entertaining and illustrative, it was also required to provide a platform for commercial exploitation. The site was developed to appeal to the whole spectrum of cricket fans in the UK and beyond.

Editorial Excellence

A new design was established and, following a competitive tender, PA Sport was appointed editorial partner in April 2004. According to Julian Goode, ECB New Media Manager, PA Sport was "far and away the best possible partner. They demonstrated an ability to produce the widest range of content, and provide a  quality editorial team at an affordable rate."

The renowned flagship PA Sport Wire service, which runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, also offered a lot of extra material for the site that no other partner could match.

With more than 700 sports reporters based in 200 countries around the world, including every Test-playing nation, PA Sport could provide unequalled coverage of global cricket.

Full-Time Team

In addition to its global network of correspondents, PA Sport has established an editorial team of three full-time staff who are dedicated to the website. From the PA Sport headquarters in Yorkshire, they produce the majority of the site's editorial content, in line with guidelines and editorial style set down by ECB.

PA Sport and the website team provide:

• News stories, regularly updated throughout the day
• Exclusive interviews with coaches and players
• Match previews
• Live scorecards with ball-by-ball updates covering all Test
• matches and one-day internationals for England and other Test
• nations, County Championship, domestic one-day
• competitions and the exciting new Twenty20 competition
• Live coverage of England Under 19s, England Women and
• England Academy Tour matches
• In depth match reports
• A database of player profiles
• Top class cricket photography, supplied by PA Sport and its
• sister company Empics
• Exclusive player columns, such as the Ashes Diary with
• England's Ashley Giles

Although based in diverse locations, PA Sport and the ECB have a seamless working relationship. The PA Sport team have daily liaison with Julian Goode, discussing some editorial areas in detail but with authority to go straight-to-air with most of their output. Quarterly meetings allow the teams to review and plan overall editorial direction for the site.

A Winning Partnership

Since its launch, the new ECB site has been hugely successful in terms of achieving its aims. Traffic levels were around three times higher in 2005 than in 2004, with 77 million page views and more than one million new users.

Some of that success was clearly down to Ashes fervour and an exciting summer of cricket, but the site has shown the excellence of content to attract repeat and new users.

Julian Goode commented "Ensuring the content of ecb.co.uk was of a consistently high quality was one of the main priorities in putting together the new site. I think we've achieved that working with PA Sport.

"Our editorial team are producing more and more in-house exclusives too, making sure we have the broadest and deepest content out there.

"It's been a totally anxiety-free relationship, which is the most you can ask for. It's impossible to be on hand to monitor every word that goes on the site, 24 hours a day; so it's important to have a team there that you know you can rely on to produce the content we want, in the style that befits the ECB. I have every confidence in PA Sport to do the job 100% if I'm away or out of contact". 

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