Rec.sport.cricket

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rec.sport.cricket is an unmoderated English-language Usenet newsgroup specialising in the discussion of all aspects of cricket. It is also a forum for non-cricket social discussion and debating between the users of the group. As there is no moderation, there is no filter at all on content but the signal-to-noise ratio is quite good. Group volume is rated as "High" by Google Groups with more than 50 "recent authors".^[1] Within the group, the name of the newsgroup is abbreviated r.s.c. (with or without periods, or capitalised RSC).

[edit] History

The group was created in April 1990. Prior to this, Usenet discussion of cricket had been spread across a number of non-specialised groups including rec.sport.misc and soc.culture.indian. A Call for Discussion was posted on news.groups on 8 March 1990 and the voting was 290-17 in favour of the new group.^[2]

In January 1992 a moderated group rec.sport.cricket.scores was created, but fell into disuse after June 1994^[3] when superseded by rec.sport.cricket.info.^[4] That group in turn became derelict in June 1999;^[5] both groups had specialised in the reporting of cricket scores, and became redundant when live cricket scores and reports became widely available on Cricinfo in the late 1990s.

[edit] Current Usage

In the twelve months ending 30 November 2006, there were over 70000 messages posted to RSC (not all are archived).^[1] This is about 30% of the volume of rec.sport.pro-wrestling but similar to the volume of rec.sport.soccer more than four times the volume of rec.sport.baseball. The single highest-volume month was March 2003, coinciding with the 2003 Cricket World Cup. Scorecards and commentary are generally not posted; almost all new topics are rhetorical in nature, discussing events and players and offering opinions. However one user in particular specialises in the posting of statistics only,^[6] and is the most respected regular user on the group.^[7]^[8]

Regular patronage is dominated by Australians, Indians and Sri Lankans resident in various parts of the world, and in small numbers other English-speaking users in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, South Africa and North America. Of the most frequent users, most appear to use their real names. The range of discussion topics is in rough proportion to the nationality or allegiance of the group members, and current events in world cricket are the precursor of nearly all new topics; this is reflected in the annual ebb and flow of group volume from month to month, with lower activity coinciding with any inactivity of the Australian and Indian national cricket teams.