Google India announces Cricket World Cup Campaign, joins hands with K. Srikkanth

With the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 kicking off in just a few hours, all eyes around the world will be glued onto their television sets. But here’s one reason why you could perhaps head to your PC instead.

Google India has announced its Cricket World Cup Campaign that offers cricket enthusiasts an interactive experience via the web.

With this exciting initiative, users can write, share, debate about and enjoy the Cricket World Cup through an integrated platform of Google products like Google Desktop, personalized homepage, Blogger and Orkut through a special landing page, www.google.co.in/cricket. The platform aims to be a one-stop shop for all information related to the World Cup, enabling visitors to access regular updates, post individual comments and analysis of the game.

Speaking about this, Sundaraman K, Head of Sales, Google India said, “Google aims to constantly improve its users experience by designing products that make things easier and deliver better results than what was available before. Cricket is one of the key passions of users in India and this campaign is designed to bring people across communities together, offering them a unique cricket experience across different Google platforms.”

What’s more, cricketer and commentator, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, will host an expert blog ‘Cricket Zone’ with Krish Srikkanth’ at www.worldcupwithkrish.blogspot.com. Through this blog, users will be able to interact with cricket experts as well as other bloggers on the performance of the various teams and engage in match analysis among other interactive sessions. Krish will also bring expert content to an interactive social networking experience through Orkut, on Krishcricket community.

As a part of this initiative, Google is also hosting a blogging cricket contest, entries for which can be submitted at www.google.co.in/cricket/contest. This will include posts on anything from on-the-ground reporting from West Indies to viewers’ opinions on the progress of the various teams at the World Cup. Both existing and new users will get a chance to participate in the contest.

In addition, Google will also have a fully equipped Blogger vehicle that will visit Bhopal, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, educating people on the use of Internet and blogging for self-expression. This educational road show will take off on March 19, 2007 from Chandigarh.

Well, cricket is a religion in India. Several big companies have even designed games and various cricket-related products and services to further induce the spirit if the game in the country, such as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 ‘Good Luck India’ Campaign and the ‘Yuvraj Singh International Cricket 2007’ - Xbox 360 Game, to name a few.