Watching cricket online is really the only way for me to see any live cricket. I can’t get Sky, but love cricket … But where to go if you want to watch cricket online? What are the best sites for watching cricket? Do you pay or not?
I have been figuring these things out for myself – and still am – but thought it could also be useful to others, so I wrote this post to share my thoughts on cricket livestreaming.
I am a big fan of Willow TV, the site that offers livestreams of (almost) every series involving Test-playing nations. The quality of the streams is fine, the pricing is reasonable and they offer a great on demand service that lets you watch a full day’s play, a highlights programme and play with their Interactive Scorecard. And if you ask me, the latter is just awesome.
Let me say first up that this Interactive Scorecard is not that interactive at all. It really is just one-way traffic, but it does give you a really cool on demand viewing experience.
Willow TV has made every ball that has been bowled available as a single videoclip. Starting with the bowler’s run up and ending with the replay.
So if you wanted to, you could skip directly to the ball being bowled after 81.3 overs and watch that one play out. Or relive the whole of that match changing passage of play, instead of just some of the highlights from tv.
What they have also done (and this is where the awesomeness really comes in) is create playlists of almost every statistic on a scorecard. There is a playlist with every run made by a team per innings, but also with every run made by each batsmen. And of every ball faced by a batsman.
You can also watch all fours, sixes, wickets, wides and no-balls. Per team and per individual.
Another thing that I really like about this feature, is that it is a live scorecard and is continually updated during the match. So no waiting for hours to see ‘that’ ball again, just make your way over to the Interactive Scorecard to replay it as often as you like.
There is still room for improvement of course, mostly in terms of usability and design, but the basics are very right.
The only thing really lacking is that there are no playlists for every ball bowled by a certain bowler or for maiden overs. But I guess that only goes to show that for most people it is a batsman’s game ..
Really, take out the limited amount of available overs from ODI’s and T20′s out of the equation, and there is no reason England could not be declaring every first day of a Test (win the toss and bat, Straussy!) with 600 on the board. Right?
If only everyone would stop urging him to take it slow.
“I remember all the nights in Bangladesh [in March], the dinners with people like Paul Collingwood who gave me the reassurance I needed.”
via Kevin Pietersen has England sitting on top of the world – Times Online.
Who would have thought a few years ago that Kevin Pietersen needed reassurance he can still play like his old self from Paul Collingwood? I bet Pietersen self wouldn’t have.
It only proves what a formidable and influential character Collingwood must be in the England dressing room. Or it goes to show that Pietersen really needs to be loved en be told so, as is often said about him.
Oh well, doesn’t really matter, does it? Not now that England have won their first international one-day throphy, after 35 years trying and four lost finals.
This blog congratulates England on a job well done. You have come a long way since losing from Holland last year.
Looking for the best or most followed (not necessarily the same) cricket accounts on Twitter? Mashable has got them.
The world’s largest blog collects Twitter lists about thousands of topics and has 86 on cricket alone which you can start following directly or browse through. An even better starting point is their own list of 100 most listed Tweeters on those 86 lists: http://twitter.com/tlists/cricket.
This blog’s account is not on that list. Yet. 
Just to let you know, you can now find Cricket-Blog.nl on twitter. It’s perfectly harmless, so why not click that follow button?
