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Ashes 2023

Wisden.com partners with CricViz to launch first-of-its-kind AI ball-by-ball commentary for the Ashes

by Wisden Staff 3 minute read

CricViz, the world’s leading cricket data and analytics provider, has announced the launch of their new AI-powered cricket commentary in partnership with Wisden.com

The first-of-its-kind commentary tool builds on CricViz’s expertise in cricket data analytics and enriches the data collected by the software company to provide vibrant ball-by-ball updates.

The AI commentary goes beyond a mere description of each ball. It uses CricViz’s proprietary metrics such as WinViz and Player Impact scores to tell the story of the game. Eventually, the system will be expanded to include a wider set of data linked to other fan engagement tools, such as fantasy teams.

The live commentary service generates approximately 500 quadrillion combinations of narrative content for every 5-minute period of action. A consumer of the live commentary would need to read many lifetimes worth of matches before they see an over described the same way twice.

CricViz has partnered with AI specialists, frog.ai, to develop the tool, using machine learning and its proprietary Natural Language Generation platform to create a commentary from CricViz’s ball-by-ball data.

With CricViz enhanced commentary, teams can provide fans with engaging ball-by-ball updates that allow fans follow matches in real-time. Using the power of AI, CricViz’s new commentary system will be able to cover hundreds of games simultaneously,  with the potential to create a professional standard of live commentary for cricket played at every level, from the World Cup final through to school cricket.

Matt Lovering, managing director of CricViz said, “We are delighted to harness the power of AI to launch the next generation of automated cricket commentary. The new service will immediately make the experience of following a game better, and creates the opportunity to expand live ball by ball updates to thousands of cricket games around the world.”

David Hipkin, co-founder of frog.ai, said, “The pairing of CricViz and the frog.ai proprietary technology is a match made in cricket fan-engagement heaven. With such a richly analytical and deep dataset, the scope for nuanced and compelling NLG storytelling is extraordinary.”

CricViz has partnered with leading cricket publisher Wisden.com, who will showcase the service during the 2023 Men’s and Women’s Ashes, and will use it to broaden their coverage of domestic and international games worldwide.

Ian Sykes, managing director of Cricket Properties said, “CricViz is the market leader in cricket data analysis, and continues to be the perfect partner for Wisden.com as we enter our into seventh year working together. The new AI-powered commentary is another great example of the CricViz team staying ahead of the curve and a great illustration of how their technology perfectly compliments Wisden’s heritage. We are excited to see where the scaling up of this service will take our digital offering and look forward to this and CricViz’s future innovations playing a critical part in helping Wisden deliver first-class cricket content to fans all over the world.”

About CricViz

CricViz, part of Ellipse Data, was founded in 2015 to harness the power of data and analytics to make cricket better for everyone. CricViz combines the world’s most extensive cricket database with unique predictive models and the deep expertise of their team of data scientists, programmers and analysts. This allows them to provide unrivalled analysis and insight to cricket clients worldwide. In supplying governing bodies, broadcasters, professional teams and media, CricViz offers a unique analytical service to tell data-driven stories.

For more information on CricViz please visit www.cricviz.com

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