Sport on the Internet: In-vision scorecard while you work

It might not surprise you to know that Argentina won the South American Cup last year, beating Brazil along the way, but it would if you knew it was a cricket competition.

The biennial tournament involves Chile, Peru, Brazil and Argentina and a report on Argentinian cricket is to be found in Googler's Gazette, the on-line magazine arm of CricInfo, the major cricket website. CricInfo was the first major cricket Internet site and has evolved from a well- run amateur site to a thoroughly professional site covering cricket world- wide. In its own way it is the ideal model for a website with a non-parochial view of its sport and with knowledgeable and committed contributors.

A glance at CricInfo's home page will remind you that it is not just England that are on tour, but Zimbabwe are visiting Sri Lanka, India are playing Pakistan and Australia are playing South Africa and New Zealand in a one-day series and the Under-19 World Cup is in progress.

CricInfo is providing ball-by-ball information on all the international games and you can even get commentary via ABC on the World Series game between New Zealand and South Africa in Perth. The ABC site leads with a picture of Neville Oliver, who heads a commentary team full of familiar Test Match Special names.

The Sporting Life site is doing ball-by-ball coverage of every England game in the West Indies. You can also get a desktop scorecard for the corner of your screen which updates automatically, so you can keep in touch while you get on with your work. If you want to view England's tour from a home point of view, there are various unofficial West Indies sites.

CricInfo also has very good statistics and sections on each Test-playing country, while Coopers & Lybrand have a site for their international ratings. Repeated attempts to load the Lord's site failed - another success by one of English sport's organising bodies to rank alongside the Rugby Football Union and the Football Association. Well done the MCC.

ADDRESSES

CricInfo - http://www-uk.cricket.org/

Sporting Life - http://www.sporting-life.com/cricket/tour/news/

Australian Broadcasting Corporation - http://www.abc.net.au/ cricket/default.htm

Unofficial West Indies site - http://www.geocities.com/ Colosseum/6165/

Sky Television - http://www.sky.co.uk/windies/

Coopers & Lybrand Ratings - http://www.uk.coopers.com/coopers/cricketratings/

Lord's - http://lords.msn.com/ (for information only)