PRM Hits a 6 at ICC Men’s T20 World Cup

In May this year, PRM were approached by the local organising committee of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Australia 2022 to provide management of the RF spectrum for the Super 12 rounds and finals series of tournaments, which was held throughout October and November.

 T20 Cricket is a fast and engaging game and the compressed timetable of matches around the country required some complex planning and preparation ahead of the tournament by Susan and Peter Twartz, owners of PRM. The opening weekend of the Super 12 rounds had matches running in three stadiums, including the now legendary India v Pakistan opener at the MCG. To achieve this, Susan and Peter engaged their team of local spectrum coordinators at each venue to assist them with the individual venue coordination as they flew between venues to manage any spectrum issues that came up.

Each venue had PRM’s proprietary ScanTower system installed to monitor the RF environment prior to play and then throughout each match. The ScanTower system is a series of RF monitors that are placed at discrete but strategic points throughout the stadium and feed data back to the event Spectrum Manager onsite or remotely if necessary. This was coupled with spectrum coordinators on the ground that physically monitor RF usage at the ground and police for rogue users that may effect the broadcast.

Since the summer of 2019/2020 PRM have provided RF spectrum management services for Test Cricket in Australia. The T20 tournament was different in that the Test season is a series of consecutive matches whereas the T20 tournament had multiple stadiums running concurrently.

Underpinning all this activity was the deployment of FreqCoord spectrum management software. Each venue was set up as a separate event in the software and within each event, timeslots were created to cover different requirements, usually triggered by different broadcast unilats for each match at the venue. This was particularly pertinent for the grand final at the MCG as additional entertainment was added to the spectrum plot.

A tournament of this size has many stakeholders. The communication engine within FreqCoord assisted enormously managing the data and keeping relevant people updated on changes to the spectrum plan. Typical stakeholders for a tournament such as this include host broadcasters, sports presentation, hospitality, security, live entertainment, the venue owners with devices such as wireless mics, IFBs, RF cameras, drones, two-way radios and many, many more.