New Zealanders are following State domestic cricket, in their thousands!

The first-class game and its one-day variation are still of intense interest to cricket lovers in this country, a fact revealed from traffic through CricInfo, and its New Zealand site, the official site of New Zealand Cricket, nzcricket.co.nz.

The Christchurch-based branch of the world's busiest sports site, CricInfo.com, recorded a 38.7% increase in traffic for State Shield and State Championship cricket over the past summer.

A total of 5,398,864 page impressions were made during the summer on State matches.

The greatest increase in public interest was in the State Shield one-day competition where figures increased by 79.4% with 1,942,638 page impressions.

This was despite the fact that there were two fewer playing days than last season due to a reduction in size of the State Shield finals.

New Zealand Cricket chief executive Martin Snedden said: "New Zealand Cricket is delighted with the increasing amount of traffic to our web site and the interest it has promoted, particularly in State Domestic Cricket this season.

"Cricket enthusiasts are obviously impressed with the service the site provides and this is reflected in the statistics.

"It's another example of the growing number of people who are becoming interested and enthusiastic about the game of cricket," he said.

CricInfo regional general manager Adrian Motherway said: "I am delighted with the amazing growth we have experienced this past summer in New Zealand.

"The cricket loving public of New Zealand have made us an integral part of the cricket scene in a few short years. Our position as the No 1 sports site in New Zealand, and in the world, continues as a result of our quality team and their dedication to live coverage and quality reporting."

Auckland grabbed the greatest increase in State Shield numbers with 179% more page impressions than last summer. They also recorded the highest average number of visits per match with 76,829. This included a best single day of 112,738 page impressions for their home match against Wellington.

Wellington was next with a 111.6% increase in page views of their games, including a massive 278,484 page impressions for their home game with Auckland, while Otago supporters joined the CricInfo news wave with an increase of 110% traffic on last year. Their match with Canterbury in Christchurch resulted in 128,606 page impressions.

In the State Championship four-day competition there was a 23% increase in traffic with Canterbury recording the greatest growth with an increase of 51.9% to an average of 129,703 page impressions per game.

Wellington still led the way however, with the greatest number of page views with an average of 139,864 views per game, and a total for the Championship of 1,398,642 page impressions.

On the international front, just over 24 million page impressions were recorded on the nzcricket.co.nz site during the National Bank England tour, with an incredible 6,863,923 visiting the coverage of the first Test.

The mid-week One-Day Internationals each attracted more than two million page impressions.

The Bangladesh tour resulted in 4,547,481 page impressions, an outstanding response given the two Test matches were only played over four actual playing days between them.

And the ICC Under-19 World Cup had 5,455,316 page impressions to round out a bumper summer for the local content on nzcricket.co.nz.

New Zealanders visiting CricInfo pages around the world during the cricket season from October 1 to March 31, but also including the last three days of the third cricket Test in early April, saw a 62.8% increase in traffic from 20,186,072 last summer to 32,865,344 this summer.

Indications are that with New Zealand having an intense winter of matches in Pakistan, the West Indies and the ICC Champions Trophy, as well as hosting India next summer, with possibly two Tests in December, the New Zealand site will exceed the record page visits set last year of 53,271,689. That was nearly 20 million page visits, or 63% more, than in 2000.

During the peak of the season in each of January, February and March, over 50,000 unique New Zealand users are visiting cricinfo.com each month and 35,000 are visiting nzcricket.co.nz.

© CricInfo