Cricket scorebooks could go the way of the abacus if a new electronic scoring system Brendon McCullum is promoting takes off.
The Black Caps wicket-keeper batsman was in Dunedin yesterday to promote the CricScore application for smartphones and electronic tablets.
"Hopefully, it will eventually replace the archaic nature of scoring and the pen and pencil," he said.
CricHQ is the sports technology company responsible for developing the technology. The company is headed by Simon Baker and backed by McCullum and former Black Cap captain Stephen Fleming.
CricHQ hopes the system will catch on with junior and amateur cricket but McCullum believes the technology could prove valuable at the high performance level as well.
"It is designed to make scoring easy with touch buttons. At the end of the game you can press a button and go through all the statistics - the averages and strike rates. Then you can work on training programmes from there, so it has some merit."
Baker said the system had to work for the mum and dad scorers, who do not know a lot about cricket, as well as the professional scorers. Most people pick the system up "fairly easily", he said.
The application costs $13-14 retail but CricHQ hopes to partner with New Zealand Cricket, cricket associations and sponsors to cover the costs.
"We would hope that we can make it free. We are about to announce our sponsor here in New Zealand and they are going to release it free of charge so there is no cost to mum and dad," Baker said.
"We hope in the next two to three years to have a good uptake in New Zealand and abroad." Baker has a message for any technology-shy types or doubters out there.
"Someone told me technology will never replace pen and paper and he emailed me that."
