Ramky ‘scores’ a point in performance analysis

Fifty-two-year-old Ramakrishnan, fondly called Ramky, did a lot of scoring in the old style when he finished his career as a cricketer (he played for TN juniors). From a manual method of scoring that existed for more than five decades, the score books gave away to digital scoring and with that there was a technological explosion. All these happened in the last 15 to 20 years and in Chennai the man who started this was Ramky. 

Modestly starting a career with the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, Ramky soon realised the scope of the method and made innovations every year before he went as performance analyst of the Indian team.

Ramky played for Indian Bank 1987 to 2000 and captained them. He started his first working relationship with TNCA in 2001 when he automated the registration system. “We were the pioneers in visual based coaching . We also were the first to introduce performance analysis of non-televised games in 2003 for the Tamil Nadu Ranji Trophy team,” says Ramky of his early days and the launch of his company SportsMechanics, which has clients in 15 countries now. 

Scorers in those days were not appointed by TNCA but the clubs had their own scorers. “We were instrumental in convincing the TNCA to send scorers for very game just like an umpire. TNCA started paying scorers to go for the games around 2002. All matches conducted by the TNCA are complete with the umpires and scores,” recalls Ramky. 

Ramky’s major break-through was in 2003 as a performance analyst with the Indian team. His first industrial project was in 2007 with the BCCI for the umpires’ evaluation project. For the first time, the umpires were assessed objectively and placed in IPL based on their performance in Ranji games. Ramky set up six cameras per ground and there were almost 15 games on the same day in remote corners of the country. His company collated all the videos and helped the umpires’ evaluation committee to assess the umpires. 

Instead of the committee members going for the game, we brought the game to the committee members. “All the scorers were given iPads and all the game data content started flowing into their website. Today every tournament conducted by the national body has live scores and we can say with pride that we have been instrumental in a major digital transformation project in one of the biggest sporting bodies,” says Ramky proudly. 

“We started as a video analysis company and then evolved into a performance analytics company and today we have become a sports data analyst company. The dream is to build an institution dedicated to Sports analytics or a centre of excellence for sports analytics. We started with four people and the TNCA supported us by giving a dream office inside the Chepauk stadium and today we are a 50-member team,” says Ramky.

Ramky wants every school game to have a feel of IPL not just with live scores. “We intend adding the video also along with the live scores. Suddenly everyone can follow the games sitting from their house on their mobile phones. The video and the data will provide enormous scope on serving the different stake holders of the game differently,” feels Ramky.