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Thats a Sixer!
Closer home, the shape of Indias unofficial religion, cricket, is also not
untouched by the magic of technology. Over the past many years there have been a
lot of technologies that have really made viewing a lot easier for the viewer
and a lot harder for the umpires (as every decision they make is under the
scanner). The third umpire is the biggest symbol of the transition. The third
umpire made a debut in the test match between India and South Africa in 1992-93.
In fact, it was the little master, Sachin Tendulkar, who became the first
batsman to be dismissed (run out) by using television replays. Contrast this
with that magical knock of 175 by Kapil Dev against Zimbabwe during the 1983
Prudential cup. Sadly for us Indians, this landmark event was never recorded on
video, as the official broadcasting company BBC was on strike. Though the
excellence of this knock is lost to posterity, the sport has certainly come a
long way since then, technologically.
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Formula One Sneak-peek |
| The worlds most elite sport,
Formula One mixes high-finance and high-technology. It is probably the only
sport that has captured the interest of most IT companies around the world.
The F1 car itself is among the most complex and advanced car platform in the
market; packing research in aerodynamics, engine technology, brakes, tyres,
and modelling, to name just a few. Tata
Consultancy Services became the only India company to provide IT services to
Formula One about three years ago. TCS is working with the Ferrari F1 team
across a spectrum of services, from safety onwards, to provide IT-based
solutions before, during, and between races, and even advanced CFD
solutions. The company has a specialist team of 40 professionals in Italy
working full time on the project.
Another Indian company, Tata Technologies has
been aiding Williams F1 in the development of new car models for every new
racing season. It is also into managing and analyzing data intensive
processes such as CFD and wind tunnel tests which generate about 7 Gb data
over a 48-hour period. The Williams F1 team, which is renowned for its FW
models year after year, also have been outsourcing a part of their
development work to Incat, a Tata Technologies company. In fact, it is not
only the Ferraris or the Williams that are looking at India. A few other
racing teams are also getting their work done through their IT partners or
captive centers. For instance, Renault is working with Xansa that has a
substantial presence in India. Honda is working with Avaya, whereas BMW and
Toyota have their own captive units in the country.
On the global front, AMD is the leading
supplier of micro-technology in Formula One and a premier processor
manufacturer for organizations involved in CFD. Formula One team, Sauber
Petronas, works on a sophisticated AMD supercomputer, which is one of the
most advanced in Formula One and the automotive industry, and acts as the
brain for the teams CFD center. Similarly, Appro, a leading provider of
high-performance enterprise computing systems, will provide a high
performance supercomputer for the ING Renault F1 teams Computation Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) Centre by June 2008. Appros supercomputer will provide the
ING Renault F1 Teams CFD Centre with a five-fold increase in CFD computing
capacity.
The latest entrant in the F1 arena is Lenovo,
which catered to the entire IT hardware requirements of the AT&T Williams F1
team in 2007. Going forward, the team will use the Lenovo ThinkStation
workstations for computer aided design, analysis, and simulation of future
car designs. Lenovo has also installed a supercomputer for AT&T Williams,
now being used in the racing teams wind tunnel simulation facilities in the
UK. With a peak performance of eight teraflops, the Lenovo supercomputer is
four times more powerful than the teams previous solution. |
Since the time of the third umpire, there have been numerous innovations;
Stump Vision, Hawk-eye, Slow MO, etc. In fact, Bangalore based StumpVision has
developed a plethora of tools and applications around cricket and other sports
using the latest that technology has to offer. The company, which is managed by
professionals with experience and expertise in both sports as well as in
software development, is a pioneer in cricket simulation software. It develops
cricket related games, match recording and analysis systems, multimedia CD-ROMs,
encyclopedias, and content for several websites. It has been associated with the
Cricket World Cup, the Champions trophy, and the Challengers Trophy, and
provides solutions for almost all the series of cricket matches involving India,
Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in the respective countries.
One of StumpVisions prominent proprietary products called Omega is a data
capture engine that captures ball by ball data analysis on more than fifteen
parameters for cricket. This data from live matches is then transmitted onto a
main server.
StumpVision is closely working with certain mobile service providers in
developing new products for the mobile spectrum. We are now extending our
expertise from cricket to tennis, and have developed a package called TenAce,
which is actually a tennis data capture and analysis package. Every aspect of a
game of tennis can be analyzed and the analysis can then be used, as in the
cricket package, in the form of television graphics, for print media, by
coaches, professional tennis players, etc. We plan to launch the retail version
of the software package shortly, said NP Thirukode, CEO, StumpVision. Apart
from cricket and tennis, the company is developing software for scoring and
displaying results live in video display boards for more than ten sports
disciplines such as hockey, volleyball, basketball, swimming, judo, karate, etc.
Scope & Future
It is difficult to put a number to the size of the global sports industry in
terms of revenues, as only the US has documented figures to share. The estimated
size of the sports industry in the US is $410 bn, which is twice the size of its
auto industry. Such staggering statistics certainly indicates the scope and
importance of IT in the global sports industry. Today, there is a lot of
excitement associated with IT in sports globally with a number of companies
developing domain expertise in specific sports. While Indian companies have
never shied away from sponsoring sports events, the spend has mostly been around
cricket. Not many companies except Satyam and TCS can boast of making a mark in
providing technology solutions to sports on an international platform. Sports
such as hockey and football in India have been largely ignored, with negligible
corporate participation. With the hockey championships as well as the
Commonwealth Games due in 2010, India has very little to show in terms of local
IT investments and breakthrough innovations. The time has come for more TCSs and
Satyams to enter the fray and revolutionize sports to an extent where a healthy
number of sports related IP are filed, creating formidable competition at the
global platform.
Priya Kekre
priyak@cybermedia.co.in
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