MUMBAI: With a view to building a stronger brand for the bat and ball game The Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) has signed an agreement with The Cricket Network (TCN) to design, build and operate the BCCI's cricket web-portal.

The initial phase of the web-portal is anticipated to soon go live. When fully functional (scheduled to coincide with the ICC Champions Trophy in October, 2006) the web-portal will enable cricket internet users around the world to access various levels of news, highlights, archival footage, statistics, streaming video, merchandising and mobile phone content.

BCCI VP Lalit Modi says, "Our vision is to embrace the entire Indian community worldwide and over time we will make available the web-portal to all Indian cricket associations with multi-lingual capabilities.
"The BCCI will promote this portal on all TV channels that broadcast the Indian home games through branding, which will be prominent on BCCI's live TV feeds around the world. This will help it to become one of the most prominent portals in the world".

Through TCN, BCCI's cricket portal will bring together media, content (Sportsbrand), technology and sporting expertise from around the world to launch what is slated to become the leading global sports network.

TCN has selected as its preferred technology partner Sun Microsystems to provide IT infrastructure solutions and support for the implementation of the company's digital asset management system that will power the BCCI's web-portal. This approach will facilitate multi-distribution by way of cable & satellite, audio, hand-held and future devices of the web-portal's cricket and lifestyle content.

TCN director Luke Reinehr says, "We aim to provide cricket content to fans as they want it, when they want it and how they want it. We consider that this sports network has great application to all cricket fans around the world.

"We are proud to have chosen Sun Microsystems. The Sun people from India, Australia and the US have been superb in understanding the joint vision of the BCCI and TCN and in developing the right solutions. We chose Sun because of their world-class architecture that supports millions of businesses across the globe, and in particular their work with the enormously successful sports site MLB.com".

Sun's global VP for media and entertainment Juan Dewar said, "Sun Microsystems is very pleased to work with TCN to create the BCCI web portal for cricket in India. We are able to leverage our award winning digital asset management reference architecture to provide a flexible infrastructure that provides compelling content to millions of cricket fans everywhere. Our approach and focus on this industry segment has helped us to work with TCN and BCCI to understand their joint vision and develop a scalable, robust infrastructure to support their needs."