Well, another Rugby Season in Australia has come & gone, and as the dust settles that can only mean one thing: Cricket Season is upon us once again. Robin Williams once called the game “baseball on valium” - and most wives (including mine!) would agree with him - but speaking for myself, I enjoy the subtleties of a good game of cricket and can never resist following the game whenever I can.

I tend to watch it on the television if it’s available, but more often than not, I’ll have it on the radio in the background while I’m working or doing other things. If neither are available for whatever reason, I can usually rely on Baggy Green (www.baggygreen.com.au), the Australian portal of CricInfo (www.cricinfo.com) - the website for all things cricket.

Thus, to keep me informed, I have television, radio and internet to choose from. That should keep me pretty well covered, right? BUT, what if none of those options are available? In order to get to & from work each day, I spend up to two hours a day travelling on the train - normally a peaceful time for me, as I get some time to read and listen to podcasts. But when there’s a cricket game in progress, anything can happen in that time. Cricket games are long. I have my Sony Ericsson phone, which has a built-in radio (as do most phones these days), but alas - it plays only FM stations, and the only local station which broadcasts the cricket here is in AM. So what can I do?

Fortunately, this year CricInfo have come up with an answer to keep obsessively curious people like myself happy: the free CricInfo MobiCast Java application, which I’ve found runs quite well on my Ericsson. Simply point your phone’s browser to http://ci.plusmo.com. Press ‘Yes’ to confirm the download, and you’re on your way.

Once the MobiCast Java app is installed on your phone, you can access it from your Applications directory. Open it, and you’ll be greeted with a list of international cricket games currently underway. Select ‘View’ for the game you’re interested in, and you’ll be able to read CricInfo’s ball-by-ball commentary, which refreshes automatically about once a minute, so your phone will continually be fed up-to-date information (You can refresh manually if you’re extra compulsive!). The program also features a simplified scorecard showing overall batting & bowling figures, so you can get a bigger picture of the game as it progresses.

At the end of the day, it’s still not the television or radio, but for those lengthy train trips, MobiCast is already proving to be the next best thing, and I for one am now a happy camper. Bring on summer!

(Also visit http://www.cricinfo.com/downloads/ for more cricket- related freebies, including a program which displays desktop alerts).