Dear Readers,

Al Gore became the subject of a million jokes for allegedly taking credit for inventing the Internet, but I will take my chance by pointing out that Cricinfo has been maintaining the most frequently updated and the most widely read blog in the world since 1996. Of course, no one called it a blog then, or calls it a blog now, but Cricinfo's ball-by-ball commentary is nothing if not a collection of dated posts.

That said, it took us quite a while to get on to the more commonly known form of blogging. Our first blog, Amit Varma¹s 23 Yards, didn¹t even use blogging software. But since converting our popular feature, The Best of the Web, to a blog you now know as The Surfer, we can claim to be part of the world of blogging.

Blogging has been the single-most important development in the world of publishing in recent years, but the most popular notion about blogs is also a slight misconception. Blogs are much more than personal online journals; we have approached it more as a technology that has given us the flexibility to experiment with different forms. We have used as a publishing tool for a filter blog like The Surfer, for Tour Diaries and for group discussions on Wicket to Wicket. And of course, for writer-driven blogs like Tim de Lisle¹s Ashes Buzz and Kamran Abbasi¹s Pak Spin.

The launch of our blogging section is a significant milestone for us. It¹s been in the making for while and it marks our wholehearted commitment to blogs. The page will continue to evolve as we expand our range and experiment with new formats. In the present form, it has three sections. The Surfer, which is meant to ensure that to read all that is worth reading on cricket on the web, you need look no further than Cricinfo, takes up the left-hand column. The top half of the middle column will showcase the best current posts, and the bottom half will list all the current blogs on the site.

With Cricinfo Select, we take a long-pending and vital step towards incorporating your views on issues that matters to you. We have used your feedback on the site before, but though Cricinfo Select, we are institutionalising a feedback-publishing mechanism. Every day, we will put up a few pieces from Cricinfo in this blog for discussion. Of course, we will moderate the comments for abuse and bad language, and will follow a zero-tolerance policy towards anything remotely libellous. For further reading, click here. Kamran's views on comments are not very different from ours.

This is as much your site as it is ours. We welcome your participation and look forward to an enriching experience, both for you and us.

Sambit Bal