BD CricInfo office closed

[Mahmood]

I wonder why its failing, is it coz they (specially Mr. Shahryar Khan) suck, or is it coz BD investors dont understand the benifit of online advertisements yet.

[Edited on 8-10-2002 by Rajputro]

[fwullah]

So this is why there have not been much of a news on BD Cricinfo site lately.

All the updatings that have been done for the previous SL tour, ICC Champion's trophy and now the current SA tour is being done by the main office in England.

[James90]

I h8 it when you get me interested in something then when the important post come in it's in BENGALI!!!!!Anyone dare to translate?

[fwullah]

BD Cricinfo is closed due to shortage of money. All 10 test playing countries have an office of Cricinfo. Cricinfo had started to work in Dhaka since December 2000. BCB and Cricinfo had a 5 year contract in which among many conditions there were conditions like to post Stats of ...... (you know what things that are posted.


Besides, there will very features ... so that anyone who enters BD cricinfo site can get any info on Bangladesh Cricket.

Primarily, Cricinfo's main office paid money to organize different things in Dhaka's office. But as Cricinfo is an advertisement based company, so it is difficult to continue without any advertisement.

So after getting not much of a response from any advertisements, the Cricinfo officials are disappointed. So, as it is not possible to continue Cricinfo's bangladesh office with its own money, so any work has been stopped since last July. And Bangabandhu Stadium's office has been shut down.

One source said that no fund and no advertisement has forced it to stop its work. Cricinfo's 5 staffs are looking for a job elsewhere.

A Bangladesh Cricinfo representative has said that it is not totally stopped only it has been shortened and after discussing with BC, we will start its work.

[fwullah]

I think that Cricinfo has spent enough money for its own advertisement but unfortunately, these advertisements on-line have not reached the mass public of Bangladesh. So, it has reached only those people who are living mostly outside Bangladesh. Thus, there is the shortage of sponsorship.

In the last year or so after Cricinfo's contract with BCB, I have never seen any advertisement of Cricinfo anywhere except for in Bangladesh Cricinfo site itself. The only other place that I have heard the name is the occassional news on Cricinfo that are published on print media only may be two times or three times since December 2000.

Anyone who is not looking specifically for cricket materials (articles and staffs) online, on search engines, then he would not even know that Cricinfo exists.

I think Cricinfo has spent more than enough money, but not at the right channels. I have never seen any advertisement or any logo of Cricinfo on any road-side billboards - ever.

And yet this is the most cheaper and the most effective way of letting people know about a new shop or a new organization.

I sent an email to Cricinfo about this - telling them about Cyber Cafes, Bangladeshi ISPs and road side advertisements.

Lets see if they can take my suggestion and work on their advertisements.

[rafiq]

it may also mean crickinfo is not earning any revenues from other sponsors taking out and paying for ads on the crickinfo site. crickinfo placing ads in bangladesh would help people know about it, so that is important, too, but they needed local bD sponsorships to keep going, and it didn't happen. I wonder if BCB was taking out ads on crickinfo, don't recall.

local sponsors for cricket matches in BD should have been interested, but as you say maybe not enough local Bangladeshis were viewing these ads via the internet. you can compare this with pakistan, where internet penetration is as bad or only slightly better than bangladesh. but of course, their cricket sponsors are more mature so they probably support crickinfo and vice versa. it's a two way relationship.

ultimately the ad model fails, they should start selling BD merchandise, etc and make money from that traffic (of course the stuff will be too expensive, can't ship to BD, there will be knock offs and will result in no real demand).

crickinfo should just get BCB to pay for all of this, as BCB does not have to bother with the work of mainting a real web site (the one BCB has is worthless).

[James90]

Thx Fahmida?

[Mahmood]

It is simply bad management. Ad is something only comes with good sales man.

Look at it this way....

CricInfo starts competitions every month, which attracts more and more BD people. They go to Bata or any other major sports, tell them, sponsor this and you are looking at all the cricket fans in dhaka looking at your add, buying your cricket gear.

Then, out of the money made, they put a good amount on the prize, so more and more people go there to get a shot.

This is just one example. There are many ways to make a site popular. Once you got the traffic, getting ads is just matter of getting a good sales man.

CricInfo probably needs good management in BD.

Just a suggestion - CricInfo could easily make DVD of the first BD test, and sell it with Add on the bd site. That is a collectable piece, I know I would buy at least 2, one for me, another for Tehsin.

CricInfo has the resource, got the connections, they are sitting on gold mine. This is sad what they have acheived.

[rafiq]

I don't think it's only crickinfo's fault.

look at the indian and other games, there are banks, people sponsoring stats, etc - does BD have these sponsors? do they value internet advertzing. it's crickinfo sales responsibility to show the value, but surely not theirs alone.

also, the economy sucks everywhere, sponsors have cut down on advertizing all over.

the merchandizing part should start someday - although i don't know how much ecomerce is going on in bangladesh - there are infrastructure issues such as payment and fullfilment of the order. but in time it will get there.

[Mahmood]

The ads are there. Look at the ittefaq site. CricInfo BD has high traffic too. Its just matter of getting them.

[rafiq]

maybe fahmida should run their local bD office or at least replace shahriyar talukdar or whatever his name is

[Mahmood]

Almer and Fahmida would definitly run it to success.

What happened to Almer???

[Tehsin]

Almer was my idea and also the AD loss due to management failure was my bit too. Thanks for stealing my thunder. Khek.

Remember footballer Salahuddin ? Great player, our best. After he retired, he went into business and as far as I know was doing great. We have a lot of cricketers who have gone on to do good things, there are some who are still looking for that one tihng that will transfer their success on field into their business.

Why not bring one of them (What is Athar Bhai doing ? I made a mistake of not KEEPING him interested in this site - Yeah, you may recall that he came in couple of times. If I had $, I could have aksed him to write columns here. Yes, Fahmida, you would have had some extra $ too) and hand over cricinfo to them. They know the players, they know BCB (let's hope) and get one of the flashier ones to handle the marketting bid (let's not forget all the marketing majors coming out of our esteemed universities).

As for Almer, the boy had talent but he just deserted us after he went back to BD. Now, can't even find SHAM around.

Fahmida, any chance you might write to cricinfo offering to help out ? We need people with dedication and really loves our cricket, not some ministers son or bbhatija.

[fwullah]

I think Cricinfo office is in Baitul Mukarram - Bangabandhu stadium - too much traffic jam and too distant for me to go there to really help.

But I can always send articles to Cricinfo through email - (but I think I will have to be more careful in my writing then).

I also think that there used to be a guy - may be his name was Saiful something or his first name started with 'S' who used to write to articles - match reports on Bangladesh Cricket - before the Bangladesh Cricinfo site was made official - he used to write it in Cricinfo newsletters - none of his writings were published on any website though.

I am talking about him - because I know I used to read his pieces and he used to write a lot better peices than I do.

I guess it was all volunteer work or may be he didn't get much encouragement to his articles on BD Cricinfo once Shayriyar was there.

Also, I am not sure if all of you will agree, there used to be a nice menu on the left side of the main BD cricinfo page. I think Bangladesh's One Day Records and the Scorecards that are now published there in the BD Cricinfo there, was great. Only it was not updated much. And there was a history written there somewhere. The present BD Cricinfo site doesn't have any history page for BD.

This new 'Shahriyar - BD official page - Coca Cola sponsor for sometime' - era has one really good thing working for them - they have the new pictures - player portraits and the updating of Bangladesh domestic matches' player stats.

[James90]

With he large column on the left.....
When I was bored and searched around cricinfo and found the BD site so I learned about their game and that really helped me. But I knew i wouldn't be able to remember so i printed basically the whole site. But that stupid column filled up half the pages.

[Tehsin]

Let's not forget that we already have a FORMER cricinfo hobnob (khek) as our member in the board. *wink*
If only he was in BD, I'm sure we'd have a better site from cricinfo if he was involved in some way. Too bad he doesn't live in Bangladesh.

[fwullah]

I have also printed all the staffs that I could find on BD cricinfo site - I started printing since after world cup 99 and still print things now a days after every tour more or less.

That is how I get to know so many things - statistics-wise (wink). ;)

At first I didn't know that I could save them as html, so I printed them in word after copying the whole pages.

Habibul_fan, have you printed only Bangladesh Cricinfo material or others also?

[James90]

I copy the interesting/useful articles for Aus and the World Stats but I don't print much anymore