OSCAR Verdict is 4/5

Winter League

OSCAR, the new Online SCores And Results system was tested out at the Division 4 matches staged at Netherton Con on Thursday and this is the feedback on that Test Day to date.

As a reminder, OSCAR provides a full online results service on and around the green on matchdays. The Test Day at Netherton on Thursday was the first time it has been used anywhere and provided score updates and results throughout the Winter League matchday.

The concept is that regular updates on matches are provided through an online service with the match scores retained and aggregate totals continually updated throughout the course of the matches. Alongside is the final screen from the Test Day matches with the final scores logged for the 4 matches played out in the Winter League Division 5 programme that day.

From my perspective as the operator of the service on Test Day, it generally went well although I was overwhelmed at the start by having to input 32 bowlers' names into the system after the teams had made the match draws. Some of the matches were underway before I was able to complete this work. It was a cold day and my fingers didn't always do want I wanted them to do when inputting names on my Android smartphone.

Then I needed to keep in touch with the 8 team members who were acting as scorers for their individual matches. They were usually walking around the green as they wished but keeping track was difficult for me and resulted in some scores not being updated as quickly or as often as I would have wished.

Having said that some of the scorers were very good in searching me out to provide me with their latest scores. It got easier as the session progressed.

The latest scores were input on my smartphone and were available to anyone else around the green within seconds. One trial with Bob Haigh saw the updated score appearing on his smartphone within 5 seconds of me hitting the input key on my phone.

The Technical Side. For those interested in how it all worked I was not using leading-edge technology but tried and tested systems and services. The results page was on a Google Sheets page that I had created and I updated that as and when I could and this automatically updated a posting on the HuddWeb website. There was a good Vodafone service at Netherton and I am very pleased about how quickly the updates appeared on the users' screens.

User Views. I know from the statistics provided by my website host that 93 people accessed the service between 11.30am and 2.30pm on matchday. Among the 93 were people in Spain, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand and Malta as well as far-flung areas of the UK with the bulk being in West Yorkshire. Unfortunately, only three of those users completed the Feedback Form to provide a score and information on their experience of the new service. There is still time to do that and any would be gratefully received as I need to learn about the user's experience if I am to continue to develop it to meet user requirements.

The three responses received were all generally positive with all marks of either 3, 4 or 5 (out of 5) in the three sections covering Usefulness, Ease of Use and General First Impressions. I will be looking to address the points raised by them and am confident that it will be a better product with those amendments. However, an average mark of exactly 4 out of 5 is very encouraging.

What happens next? I will be working on the amendments suggested which are not ground-breakingly difficult so I would expect to make them available in the next version of the system. I may have some unannounced test days at league matches to test out some of the amendments once added.

I intend the next real Test Day to be at a Knock-Out competition to test out its usefulness at something different to a league matchday format. That being the case I am looking to use the system at Finals Day of the Winter Cup on 16 April at Springwood. I will need to test the Vodaphone coverage at Springwood to ensure that the basic signal is going to be adequate for my needs. Again the service will be available around the green and anywhere else that people access HuddWeb at that time.