Wisden Online is looking at picking up a stake in Cricinfo, a London-based company and the promoter of the website cricinfo.com. Both have India-centric operations, namely WisdenIndia Online and cricinfo.com.

Sources close to the development said that Wisden Online is looking at picking up around 67 per cent stake in cricinfo.com at the cost of £1.8 million.

Sources also said a formal announcement of merger between is due within the next few days and, that is, when  the equity sharing figures will be formally announced.

Senior officials at Wisden's India office were not willing to comment on the issue.

Cricinfo.com's managing director Badri Seshadri, who handles the Indian operations from Chennai, said, " I cannot say much, but, all I can say is that yes, talks have been on for sometime in UK directly as both our holding companies are based in UK."

Cricinfo's senior official in UK, Alex Balfour in an e-mail reply also only confirmed that they were in talks with Wisden.

A senior source at cricinfo.com in Chennai said that it is a move to primarily consolidate the two operations and 'what better way to associate yourself with a company such as Wisden.'

An association with the billionaire Paul Getty, owner of Wisden, is expected to help the company grow to a position of financial strength.

While Wisden is known for their Annual Cricketer's Almanac, that dates back to 1864, the 10-year-old cricinfo.com, has an estimated 150 million page impressions per month.

Sify, formerly Satyam Infoway, the Chennai-based private internet service provider has earlier acquired 25 per cent equity in the London-based Cricinfo for $37.5 million.

Cricinfo.com's India-centric site resides in Satyam's portal, www.satyamonline.com.

Currently, Satyam Infoway is one of the largest shareholder in the company with 25 per cent stake.

Last week, Wisden Online also launched an innovative form of cricket statistic- ball-by-ball player analysis.

According to this, from now on the performance of every international cricketer can be assessed against each of his peers.

Over the last two years Wisden Online has invested more than $4 million in the creation of the world's largest electronic database of cricket statistics. Wisden Online already holds information on 750,632 balls (63 tests and 159 one day internationals).

The company will be using this unique collection of data to calculate the Wisden World Cup Ratings, a new index for all ODI performances over the past year for all the players in 2003 World Cup.