Cricket tournaments like the ICC Champions Trophy and the Cricket World Cup always reminds me of the Superbowl, though I wish the Cricket advertising was as blogworthy as some of the Superbowl ads. In India, the World Cup has caught the fancy of content creators and advertisers alike; some launches:

-- Microsoft will be launching their cricket game for the Xbox 330 on the 27th of March 2007. In India, it’s sponsored by cricketer Yuvraj Singh and called “Yuvraj Singh International Cricket 2007”. (Release)
-- Visa has launched a World Cup blog called inspireindia.in, featuring contests (which require registration) and videos and a song composed for the world cup; they’ve also created a channel on youtube. (The Hindu)
-- Intvo has launched CricCast, Crick Playalong and Sports Guru on the mobile, with Airtel, Idea Cellular, Yahoo and Indiatimes. I found the concept of Crick Playalong rather interesting, since allows users to play cricket on while the game is in progress. However, it does seem limiting that once the match is over, so is your game...More details at Indiantelevision.com. Update:Kishan Bulusu, Founder and CEO of Intvo informs me that users can play along with old matches after the game is over.
-- Contests2Win has launched a “Cricket Face Off” which just goes on forever. Via that page, I came across a branded site for an alcoholic beverage by Media2Win, which has a cricket game
-- Mobile2Win has launched a bunch of games - ‘Classic table-top’, a Bookie cricket game, Cricket Fever and Cricket Fever.

We’ll find out in a few days whether the ads are any good...I quite liked the Nike one, but didn’t think much of the ‘Ladega toh jeetega!’ ad by Pepsi.