Lloyd Smith, the Bermuda Cricket Board president, hopes the scoring technology CricHQ will help generate new interest when the season starts next month.

CricHQ was used to provide updates on Bermuda’s ICC World T20 Sub Regional Qualifiers in Buenos Aires and Smith is excited about the technology being used for domestic matches. He met with club representatives on Wednesday to map out plans for the season, which begins with open cricket on April 21.

“We’re looking at all the clubs to use CricHQ so we can have live updates and people can follow it online,” Smith said. “We wanted to let them see how CricHQ performs and what we’re looking to do with it.

“Hopefully this new technology will help generate some new interest in cricket and in the league. When Bermuda was playing in Argentina, being able to follow it ball-by-ball drew some interest. Having it all season, from open cricket to T20 is going to be interesting. People may end up coming out to watch because they were looking at a game online.”

When elected last November to replace outgoing president Lloyd Fray, Smith spoke of his desire for more cricket to be played locally.

The season starts with open cricket, followed by 50-over matches and the T20 competition. No dates have been set aside for the competition involving the top four teams from the previous season.

Belco withdrew its sponsorship before last season and this marks the second year without the Belco Cup, which started in 1987 as the Premier Cup. Smith’s former club, Devonshire Recreation Club, were the first winners. “If we can get a sponsor for it, which we are still looking for, then we’ll try to fit it in,” Smith said.

“We were actually looking to start the season earlier but we did have a request come in from St David’s in reference to the Fiqre Crockwell Memorial Tournament, so we pushed our start back one week to April 21. They will have that tournament on April 14 and 15.”

Another new initiative involves playing open and 50-over matches at the National Sports Centre. “We will try to get as many of the clubs that do not have a home field to use [the NSC] as much as possible,” Smith added.

“The idea is to use the National Stadium as much as we can. If we’re going to host a tournament in the future we need the stadium, getting comfortable with how the wicket plays.”