Breaking news! Sachin Tendulkar played the ball outside the off stump to hit a four, smashing a half-century of just 28 deliveries. Mumbai Indians are now at 104 runs at the loss of three wickets after 14 over.

No it’s not a live commentary of Indian Premier League (IPL) season 3 match but may be a scorecard of online cricket games available widely across the internet these days. Online cricket games are the flavour of the season. With IPL kick started last Friday, online gaming sites exclusively dedicated to cricket lovers are witnessing three to four times rise in their traffic rates; an usual drift in a cricket crazy nation.

Dreams11.com, an online cricket fantasy online game site, which was recently nominated in the best ‘new website’ category at the Industry Recognition awards hosted by Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA), Las Vegas, is quite active these days.

“We have witnessed a tremendous increase in the traffic on our website in the last two weeks. The clicks on our site are up three to four folds from our monthly average traffic rates and looking at the last two-three days, we expect the rate to improve further,” said Harsh Jain, founder and CMD of Dream11.com.

Being an exclusive cricket gaming site with more than 50 casual cricket games, the gaming site has something special for the gamers. In association with Planet M, the game site has launched ‘India Ka No. 1 Selector’—a game that offers money rewards up to Rs 5 lakh for the top 60 players.

“In the game, the players will be allocated virtual money worth Rs 100 crore to choose their dream 11 team. Interestingly, the results of the real-time matches been played in the BCCI’s IPL will decide the points earned by the gamers. So, if a gamer has bet on a player, who performed superbly this IPL league matches will get more points and will be among the contender to win Rs 10,000 worth cash prices daily,” Jain said.

Cashing on the cricket fever, India games has tied up with IPL to become its official gaming partner not for just this season but for the next eight years.

Vishal Gondal, CEO of Indiagames told Financial Chronicle, “The tie-up between Indiagames and IPL is one of its kinds. We will be offering online social games and mobile games for IPL, which will be soon visible on the IPL official website. We have already launched a game ‘Cricket T20Fever’ for this. Till then, gamers may enjoy our games on either Indiagames or social networking sites such as Facebook. For mobile gaming, we have secured consent with all major telecom operators.”

Lalit Modi, chairman and commissioner of the IPL said, “We are very excited that IPL fans will now be able to play IPL-themed games across a range of platforms. Online, mobile, social and multi-player games are widely popular globally, and we believe games are a tremendous way to expand the IPL footprint.”

Reliance-led Zapak also owns a dedicated website for all cricket lovers – zapakcricket.com where there are 31 cricket games, news related to the sport, match schedules for tournaments worldwide and also live scores. The only multiplayer cricket game – Zapak Multiplayer Cricket is available on the portal as well which gives the user an option to play in various stadiums like Eden Gardens, Wankhade Stadium, and The Oval Stadium.

Zapak also offers fantasy gaming on www.god.zapak.com. “Fantasy cricket is another form that will get the users excited about the IPL. This unique concept allows people to play the same game as the one going on in a particular tournament. For example, in IPL, if there is a match between Deccan Chargers and Kolkata Knight Riders, the game allows the user to choose his team of 11 players. Based on the actual performance of the players on ground, there will be points allotted to the players included in the fantasy team,” said Arun Mehra, COO Zapak Digital Entertainment. Users can also add extra points to their team by, first, assign a trump card from the chosen team and second, predict players hitting maximum 4s, 6s or taking wickets etc,.