(18 September 2009 5:10 pm)

MUMBAI: Accentuating the experience of live cricket matches beyond the field onto the mobile platform, the cricket based games created by Indiagames have recorded more than 10 million paid downloads worldwide.

Indiagames’ cricket games such as Indiagames - Cricket 20-20, Indiagames - World Championship Cricket, Cricket One Day Series and Indiagames - T20 World Championship have got players hooked on to their mobile phones, globally.

Of the cricketing nations downloading these games, India tops the charts, followed by UK, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, and New Zealand. There has also been traction from the US where there is a community of expat cricket lovers.

Indiagames CEO Vishal Gondal said, “Cricket is followed with zest on a global scale. The record number of downloads reinstates the games’ appeal worldwide. Indiagames shares a passion for cricket and this is clearly evident in our games and our strategy to create a Cricket franchise.

“We realised that consumers don’t necessarily want only branded content. Users are equally interested in the quality of the game and not only with the celebrities endorsing the products. Quality games sell and we raise the bar with every new mobile cricket game we publish."

Interestingly, the company’s strategy for creating these games has also changed through the years. Earlier, while they relied on games based on ODI’s and test matches, today it’s the Twenty20 format of the game that is preferred.

Indiagames’ cricket games have also been featured prominently on various operators all over the world- a case in point being Telstra-Australia which recently gave ‘England vs Australia – Test Series' a ‘top-deck’ feature. The game is also live on various operators in the UK including Vodafone, 3 and Orange amongst others.

Apart from telcos, handset manufacturers in India have also shown a keen interest in promoting phones with Cricket content. Nokia – which has the majority of market share in India, led the way with a large embed deal of T20 World Championship on two handsets last year. This made cricket - which is also called a religion in India- accessible to the masses of mobile users who do not have data access to download content.