Deep Dive · 2024
Cricket Gully
A cricket platform optimized for traffic spikes and ad revenue
ROLEFrontend Engineer
DURATION4 months
TEAM1 designer · 2 frontend · 2 backend
TIMELINE2024
Next.jsTypeScriptEdge RuntimeTailwind
Challenge & Limitations
The operational hurdles, data boundaries, and strict service Level agreements of the system.
The Problem Statement
A high-traffic cricket news and live-scores site that struggled during match windows — slow loads, ad-driven layout shifts, and a Core Web Vitals profile that hurt both SEO and revenue. The brief: keep the product the same, make it feel twice as fast.
Rigid Constraints
- ·Heavy ad inventory that couldn't be removed
- ·Massive traffic spikes during live matches
- ·SEO sensitivity — the team's primary acquisition channel was organic search
- ·A small frontend team — solutions had to be simple enough to maintain
Design & Engineering Decisions
The tactical solutions mapping backend systems, developer experience, and interface layout.
Architecture
- →Moved high-traffic pages to ISR with short revalidation windows tuned per page type
- →Pushed personalization to the edge so the cached HTML stays cacheable for the long tail of users
- →Carved out a strict client/server boundary so server components do the heavy data work and client components handle only what they must
UX & Interface
- →Reserved space for every ad slot up-front so the page never reflows after ads load
- →Used skeletons sized to match real content, including ad slots, to keep CLS at zero
- →Surfaced live scores as the primary above-the-fold element on match days
Performance
- →Cumulative Layout Shift driven down to ~0 on the highest-traffic templates
- →Largest Contentful Paint under 1.8s on the article template at the 75th percentile
- →Edge caching cut origin load by ~70% during peak match windows
Deliverables
The Outcome & Business Impact
Search rankings recovered within a release cycle. Ad revenue per session went up while ad inventory stayed the same — the gain was entirely on the engineering side.
<1.8sLCP at p75
≈0CLS
−70%Origin load at peak
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