The history of rec.sport.cricket
Rick Eyre
I'm putting together a short history of the r.s.c.newsgroup for the new
CricInfo Interactive Magazine
(http://www.cricket.org/link_to_database/INTERACTIVE/), of which I am the
editor.
I've participated in the newsgroup only since October 1994, and I would be
interested in hearing from anyone who can tell me when, why and how the
newsgroup was created, especially from anyone who has been present since its
inception. Any recollections of classic threads from years gone by would
also be most helpful.
Does anyone know of any archives of this newsgroup? I am aware of the
excellent Dejanews on-line archive (indeed I have set up a customised
search form on my cricket home page), but this only goes back to March
1995 - do any archives go back further than this?
Please email me if you can be of assistance, and don't forget to take a
look, and take part in, CricInfo Interactive.
Rick Eyre
Editor, CI Interactive Magazine
| Rick Eyre ri...@gloop.hna.com.au |
| It's all happening at http://www.ozemail.com.au/~reyre/cricket.html |
| My World Test XI: 1.Taylor(c) 2.Slater 3.Lara 4.Tendulkar 5.Waugh,S |
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Badrinarayanan Seshadri
Rick Eyre wrote:
>
> I'm putting together a short history of the r.s.c.newsgroup for the new
> CricInfo Interactive Magazine
> (http://www.cricket.org/link_to_database/INTERACTIVE/), of which I am the
> editor.
>
> I've participated in the newsgroup only since October 1994, and I would be
> interested in hearing from anyone who can tell me when, why and how the
> newsgroup was created, especially from anyone who has been present since its
> inception. Any recollections of classic threads from years gone by would
> also be most helpful.
Ah, strange that you didn't ask me about this:-)
I have been reading RSC from Sep 1991, and contributing
from Oct 1991. I am sure you can find several others
who were here right from the inception. I was also the
main proponent of the newsgroup rec.sport.cricket.info
and wrote the charter for that group.
About an year back I decided to do some research on
when and how the newsgroup rec.sport.cricket was
created. During the course of the research I found
lots of data but curiously _no name_ for the person
who really floated the RFD for RSC.
Before the newsgroup was created, discussions
related to cricket was conducted in the newsgroup
rec.sport.misc. On 6th March 1990, an RFD was
posted to newsgroups
soc.culture.indian
soc.culture.british
rec.sport.misc
news.groups
news.announce.newgroups
to discuss the formation of rec.sport.cricket. (Note
that several other countries where tests are played
did not have a full fledged culture newsgroups at that
time.)
There are no records of when exactly the newsgroup
was formally created by a 'newgroup' control message.
The earliest control message is dated 23 May 1991.
The mechanism of creating a newsgroup in the big 8
usenet hierarchy as it is now, was not existent at
that time. So several news administrators might have
created and deleted the newsgroup at various times
before May 1991. I came to USA in August 1991, and
have since then been using the newsgroup without any
interruption. I am sure someone else who was using the
group before can give a better picture of it.
I do have the charter for this group (badly written:-)
from the first RFD message, posted by a person with the
email address
s2...@cs.utexas.edu (Spring 90)
There is no name in the body of the message. Can someone
recognize this email address and find out who this person
was? Most probably this person was an exiled Indian
graduate student from the above university.
The moderated newsgroup rec.sport.cricket.scores was
formally created on 2nd January 1992 with Prof. KS Rao
as the moderator. The formal RFD was posted on
6th Nov 1991.
Prof. KS Rao was, in the meantime, running a mailing list
from the North Dakota State University for cricket related
discussion and information. By the time the usenet
newsgroups became part and parcel of every university,
the mailing lists were discontinued.
It was felt by a few of us (will write up a complete
history when I find time, including all names) that rscs
was too limited by its charter and decided to come up with
rec.sport.cricket.info to supercede rscs.
rsci came into existence formally on 29 March 1994.
Vicky Vigneswaran is the current and the first moderator
for this newsgroup.
> Does anyone know of any archives of this newsgroup? I am aware of the
> excellent Dejanews on-line archive (indeed I have set up a customised
> search form on my cricket home page), but this only goes back to March
> 1995 - do any archives go back further than this?
It is quite possible that Prof. Rao may have the archives
of the cricket mailing list discussions. I will find out
from him if that indeed is the case.
Sadiq Yusuf might have his own personal archives but
unfortunately they will mostly be his own postings:-)
===
Yes, I would like to receive as much information as possible
regarding the newsgroup - in particular the pre Aug 1991
period. I have the charter etc. for all the cricket newsgroups,
dates of creation etc. If you have any personal information
to share, please do send a mail to me and Rick Eyre. I will
put up a short history of the cricket newsgroups in CI
interactive pretty soon.
The next project will be about the irc channel #cricket!
--badri
--
--------------------------------------------------
Badri Seshadri
Graduate Student
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Cornell University
--------------------------------------------------
Badrinarayanan Seshadri
A quick followup to my earlier posting:
* Prof. KS Rao was, in the meantime, running a mailing list
* from the North Dakota State University for cricket related
* discussion and information.
The starting dates for the mailing lists cricket and crickets are:
cricket - Nov 1, 1991
crickets - Jan 8, 1992
Sailesh Krishnamurthy
>>>>> "Badri" == Badrinarayanan Seshadri <ba...@sofia.mae.cornell.edu> writes:
<snipped Badri's interesting info on rsc>
Badri> The next project will be about the irc channel
Badri> #cricket!
Badri, I remember sometime back you said (on #cricket) that you
were working on a "history of Indian cricket" .. how is that
going ?
--
Cheers
Sailesh
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/people/krish
Badrinarayanan Seshadri
Sailesh Krishnamurthy (kr...@cs.purdue.edu) wrote:
* >>>>> "Badri" == Badrinarayanan Seshadri <ba...@sofia.mae.cornell.edu> writes:
* <snipped Badri's interesting info on rsc>
* Badri> The next project will be about the irc channel
* Badri> #cricket!
* Badri, I remember sometime back you said (on #cricket) that you
* were working on a "history of Indian cricket" .. how is that
* going ?
eh? better persons than I have done a pretty good job of that.
Read Mihir Bose's 'The History of Indian Cricket'.
I said I wanted to come up with an online html write-up
on the history of indian cricket - after reading a few such
books as above:) That will have to wait for now.
Manas Mandal
In article <323B0B...@sofia.mae.cornell.edu>,
Badrinarayanan Seshadri <ba...@sofia.mae.cornell.edu> wrote:
Wowie!! I didn't realize you had done *that* much research on this!!
I used to think that rsc existed pre-1990, but just cannot remember
any more. I am sure Prof. Rao or ubiquitous Sadiq will remember.
I do remember that net.nlang.indian used to exist in 1986 :-)
>It was felt by a few of us (will write up a complete
>history when I find time, including all names) that rscs
>was too limited by its charter and decided to come up with
>rec.sport.cricket.info to supercede rscs.
Hmm, the reasons for creating rsci were slightly more than this :-)
Anyway, speaking of rscs. If you read the charter of rscs, you will
find that rscs was the first "Internet Cricket Database" of any kind,
and in the charter, Prof. Rao talks about the dream of archiving
the scorecard of *every* test match ever played, etc.
I am confident that this was the very first proposal of an Internet
Cricket Database of any kind, and that Prof. Rao's implementation
via rscs is the first Internet Cricket Database.
In fact the ideas that came about from rscs, and then the discussions
on IRC #cricket were the contributing factors to the creation of
CricInfo by the *many* founding members.
bak
--
:Manas Mandal PSP Performance:
: International Business Machines Corporation:
:man...@austin.ibm.com 11400 Burnet Road, Austin, TX 78758 USA:
Dinesh Katiyar
In article <51m9pj$p...@ausnews.austin.ibm.com>,
Manas Mandal <man...@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>In article <323B0B...@sofia.mae.cornell.edu>,
>Badrinarayanan Seshadri <ba...@sofia.mae.cornell.edu> wrote:
>
>Wowie!! I didn't realize you had done *that* much research on this!!
>I used to think that rsc existed pre-1990, but just cannot remember
>any more. I am sure Prof. Rao or ubiquitous Sadiq will remember.
I am quite sure that it existed before 1990. I have been following this
group since around 1988 or 89 (can't remember exactly). I came to know
about this group after it was formed but can't recall who was
responsible for it. God bless him/her.
Regards,
Raja J.