The Cricket World Cup gets underway this weekend and Cricket Ireland boss Warren Deutrom is targeting a quarter final place as the standard the irish team should be seeking to achieve.
The likelihood of that could be decided as early as Monday when Ed Joyce, William Porterfield, Kevin O’Brien and the team take on the West Indies in their opening group phase match.
The signs are positive after an overnight victory over Bangladesh in the final warm up game ahead of the tournament.
The action will be broadcast live on Sky Sports with plenty of updates across RTE, Newstalk and other media outlets but for many it will be through mobile apps and social media that the games will best be followed.
Hawkeye has developed the official app for the World Cup, available to download now across Apple and Android. It will feature live scores, ball by ball commentary and unique material derived from Hawkeye’s ball tracking technology, similar to that used at Croke Park.
It is already the number one Sports app by download in 20 countries around the world.
The app is also partnering with Twitter and Facebook to enable perhaps the most connected tournament in sporting history.
Tourism Ireland is the official sponsor of the Irish team at the Cricket World Cup and it will be interesting to see how it integrates its own popular social media streams to reach out to the massive worldwide audience that the tournament will attract.
“The Cricket World Cup is a huge global event, said Wyndham Richardson, CEO of Hawkeye’s Pulselive division that is managing the technology behind the app.
“We wanted to create an app that combines great content with interactivity to deliver a fully immersive fan experience.”
Hopefully Ireland can be a big player in the event that will set new standards in how sport and it’s fans can engage.
