Cricket club website design: what actually belongs on it
Cricket club websites fail differently from other sports. The season is long, the data is rich, and most sites capture almost none of it.
What cricket supporters actually look for
- The scorecard. Not the result — the card. Who scored what, who bowled, how it fell apart.
- Averages. Batting and bowling, updated through the season. The most revisited page on a cricket club site by a distance.
- Fixtures. Including which team, since most clubs run several.
- Selection. Published teams, usually midweek.
- The league table. Position, points, promotion and relegation.
Notice what is missing from that list: news. Cricket club sites are heavy on news and light on data, and supporters want the opposite.
Averages are the retention page. A player checks their own average, then a teammate's, then last season's. It is the closest thing a cricket club site has to a reason to return midweek, and most sites do not have one.
Multiple XIs
Most cricket clubs run a first XI, a second, sometimes a third and fourth, plus juniors and women's teams. Every one needs its own fixtures, results and selection.
This is where generic website builders collapse. A structure built for one team means the second XI ends up as a PDF, and the players stop looking.
Junior sections
Often the largest group of people connected to the club, and usually a single neglected page. Parents are checking whether Saturday's under-13 fixture is on, and if the site cannot tell them they will ask on WhatsApp instead — and then the club has no idea who they are.
A junior section done properly is also a first-party data opportunity, since parents will give an email address for fixture updates.
The season problem
Cricket sites go quiet for six months. The fix is not forced content — it is making the archive genuinely useful. Career records, past seasons, honours boards. A site with fifteen years of averages is worth visiting in February; one with a news feed that stopped in September is not.
What we build
Scorecards, partnerships, batting and bowling averages, career records and multiple XIs, with a two-decade South African cricket archive already loaded so player pages are populated on day one. More on cricket club websites and apps.
Building the averages page properly
Averages are the highest-return page on a cricket club site and the most commonly absent. What it needs to hold:
| Batting | Bowling |
|---|---|
| Innings, not-outs, runs | Overs, maidens, runs, wickets |
| Highest score, average, strike rate | Average, economy, strike rate |
| Fifties and hundreds | Best figures, five-wicket hauls |
| Filterable by team and season | Filterable by team and season |
The filter matters. A second XI player wants the second XI averages, and a table mixing all teams together is useless to everyone.
Set a qualification threshold and state it — typically five innings or twenty overs. Without one, a player who batted once for 40 not out tops the averages all season and the page stops being taken seriously.
Handling the junior section
Junior cricket is usually the largest group attached to the club and the worst served by the website. Parents want three things and rarely get any of them online:
- Is it on? Weather and pitch decisions, published somewhere they can check at 8am
- Where and when? Venue, meet time, what to bring
- Did anything happen? A result and a photograph their child appears in
Solve the first one and you have a reason for every parent to give you an email address, which is the most valuable list a cricket club can build. Most clubs do this on WhatsApp instead, where the club owns nothing and can measure nothing.
The winter problem
A cricket site goes quiet from September to April, and most clubs respond by letting it go stale. The alternative is making the archive genuinely useful.
- Career records that accumulate across seasons
- Season-by-season honours boards
- Historic scorecards, searchable
- Winter nets and pre-season fixtures as they are announced
- Membership renewal, which happens in the off-season anyway
A site with fifteen years of averages is worth visiting in February. One with a news feed that stopped in September is not, and the supporter who checks and finds nothing is slower to return in April.
Scorecards and where the data comes from
Manual scorecard entry does not survive a season. Most leagues now use a scoring app, and the practical question for any website is whether it can ingest that feed or whether somebody retypes it.
If the league feed exists, insist the site consumes it. If it does not, the fallback is a single entry point that populates the scorecard, the averages, the result and the social card together — one entry rather than four.
Common questions
What belongs on a cricket club website?
Scorecards, batting and bowling averages, fixtures by team, published selections, and the league table. Averages are the most revisited page and most club sites do not have one.
How should multiple XIs be handled?
Each needs its own fixtures, results and selection. A structure built for one team pushes the second XI into a PDF and the players stop looking.
What should a cricket site do in the off-season?
Make the archive useful. Career records, past seasons and honours boards are worth visiting in February; a news feed that stopped in September is not.
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