After a little bit of experimentation, it appears that the .cri files exported by Play-Cricket Scorer Pro (the ECB’s scoring software for laptops, not to be confused with Play-Cricket Scorer, the mobile device app) contain XML match data. It’s possible to open the .cri file as an archive using 7-Zip (or similar); the file residing within the archive is XML-formatted and contains the ball-by-ball data, albeit using a proprietary schema.

This is probably only of interest to those who are concerned about data openness and interoperability. However, it is encouraging to see that data entered in Play-Cricket Scorer Pro may be extractable if needed, and then possibly converted into an open format. It may even be possible to create match files based on this schema and import them into PCS Pro, should (for instance) one have match data in another format, such as Stephen Rushe’s Cricsheet YAML.

Nevertheless, since all this is highly experimental, it would be very welcome if ECB/NV Interactive were to officially support XML exporting of match data, meaning that we need not fear losing the capability in future.