1) This is what started it – a study on the 20 greatest Indian Test cricketers of all-time (by the website HoldingWilley), which made the front page of The Hindustan Times nationally on February 8^th 2009. This wasn’t Impact Index yet but what led to it, which suggests the vacuum that exists for an entity like Impact Index. The mindset that guided this, however, was very much what was eventually responsible for Impact Index – exactly the same team worked on it and drew heavily from the work done during this exercise.

2) Impact Index was unveiled in Oxford in July 2009, during the ICC Centenary History Conference, at Oxford, England. The 20-minute presentation was a big success and it led to the entire Test cricket study being published in The Cricket Statistician - the erudite and time-honoured journal of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, in December 2009. (The findings of this study now are somewhat outdated, as the data inputted was only till early-2009).

3) In August 2009, Impact Index was the main subject of a 30-minute radio show on cricket – Frontfoot, from New Jersey.

4) The T20 version of Impact Index (still a manual system) was used as the “Official Stats Partner” for the Radiant Info Twenty20 USA tournament, the biggest T20 tournament in the United States in September 2010. This was a first for any statistical tool in the game of cricket – umpires in this tournament even sported Impact Index on their shirts. The system was used to give out all the individual awards in the tournament.

5) In the same period, Castrol Cricket’s website had a famous statistical analyst call Impact Index the only existing statistical system capable of doing certain things.

6) On 24^th January 2011, Impact Index was featured on the front page of The Times of India nationwide, for its study on the greatest ODI players of all-time. The website launched the next day.

7) It led to some international coverage too, like this, where one of the new Australian stars of cricket was even queried about Impact Index.

8) The Times of India exclusively tied-up with Impact Index for World Cup 2011. Though they barely utilised 20% of its potential when it came to ODI cricket, there were several comprehensive pieces during the tournament, especially just before it began.

9) The most famous sports reference book in the world - Wisden Almanack 2012 - has a write-up on Impact Index, which, to the best of everybody's knowledge, makes it the first alternative stats system in cricket to ever receive this honour in the 148 years of its existence.

10) Impact Index was also covered on the Forbes India website for its utility in helping team management picking the right players and spotting unknown talent, especially in T20s. The same piece was also published in Firstpost.

This fantasy exercise began the coverage – an All-Time Indian One-Day Dream Team – utilising Impact Index’s unique ability to measure performances from different eras.

Every participating World Cup team was previewed, and this was the Indian preview, where Impact Index tipped India as favourites to lift the World Cup.

Pieces like this – with 15 provocative observations, piqued the curiousity of many cricket fans. The very first observation here about not taking New Zealand lightly and tipping them to reach the semis (we were the only “experts” to stick our necks out to say that) proved prophetic.

The comprehensive preview piece on all the participating teams of World Cup 2011 was a collector’s item for a lot of fans. It gave out a lot of information about the teams, which even the coaches might have found useful.

There were preview pieces for each and every match in the World Cup, and this was the one on the eve of the final between India and Sri Lanka.

All the above has happened without a single rupee spent on PR or Marketing.

Backend

The following are two examples of what is being achieved at the backend. This should give a good idea of what we are accomplishing as a Stats tool.

This is a screen shot of one of the pages from the database being created (we limit exposure to top ten in these screenshots for space and confidentiality reasons). This is a page on the highest impact players in ODI international history – note the various columns marking individual measurements – this is the biggest hallmark of Impact Index.

The most impactful batsmen have their own list – where qualities like Pressure, Partnership-building, Chasing, etc are all marked out separately.

The most impactful bowlers are also broken down clearly – separate columns for Top/Middle-order wickets and Lower-order wickets, Partnership-Breaking, etc.

The T20 automation is also done, and this is a screenshot of the T20 player list – it has information every single T20 club would be interested in getting their hands on.