Where To Watch Cricket Live Streaming Online

Many Americans don’t understand the game of cricket. And, why would they? It’s a game like no other. This very British game was invented in the early 1600’s. Although it spread rapidly through the British Empire, when the game began to take off internationally in the mid 1800’s the United States was one country that didn’t really catch cricket fever.

As a New Zealand ex-patriot it’s extremely difficult to find a place to watch the “summer game that I love” while living in America. When cable television fails you miserably, you must turn to the Internet to find a way to watch the sports that you love.

WATCH LIVE CRICKET: PICK A VERSION

Just in case you are new to this splendid game (say what, chaps?), here is a run down on the three different types of cricket being played on an international stage.

Test Cricket: The first, oldest, and my favorite version of international cricket is called Test Cricket. It’s played between two countries and one match can take up to 5 days.  Both sides have two innings and best of all the matches often end up in a draw with no team declared the winner. It’s a beautiful game of patience and dogged determination played in picturesque white clothes.

One-Day Cricket: Created for television in the 1970’s by Australian Media Mogul Kerry Packer, One-Day cricket is thought to be the first Americanization of this very global game. In One-Day cricket there is always a result and until 2007 this was the most exciting form of the game on television. Each team has a single inning and each turn at bat lasts approximately three and a half hours.

It’s an extremely fun game to watch, but it’s still a long summer day spent in the sun. One-Day cricket represented a move away from the white clothing to more bright colored clothing, which initially branded cricket the “Pajama Game.”

Twenty20 Cricket: The rise of popular culture, televised sports, and quite simply the desire to be as cool as baseball, forced the cricket lawmakers to look at an even faster version of the grand old game. Twenty20 is a much shorter version of the One-Day game and it’s all done and dusted in under three and half hours. It’s a great game to watch at night when it’s played under light.

In 2007, the first game of International Twenty20 took place and is now a huge sport in Asia, where cricket is a billion dollar industry. In 2008, a new Indian league was created called the IPL. Each year the best cricket players in the world are auctioned among the franchises.

IPL was the first sporting event ever to be shown live globally on a dedicated YouTube channel in 2010. Today, the India Times runs a YouTube Cricket Channel that will be streaming all the IPL games live in 2013. The competition starts on April 3, 2013 and finishes on May 26, 2013.  The IPL tournament schedule is available online.

WHERE TO WATCH LIVE CRICKET STREAMING ONLINE

You can watch some of the Twenty20 cricket live on ESPN3’s website. When it comes to watching sports online it can be tricky to know if it’s free or not.  The good news is that you can watch cricket live on ESPN3 free. That means you don’t need a cable subscription to watch live cricket as long as your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is on the list of ESPN3 carriers. If you are new to the sport, you can watch the big bash in the Caribbean Twenty20 league throughout the month of January. You might just find yourself hooked at the end of the month.

In 2007, ESPN bought cricinfo.com a popular text site for cricket fans around the world. The cricket-focused site is a great place to watch live cricket games, in particular, the Twenty20 world championships (the next one is in 2015) and other Twenty20 matches. You can watch live cricket games on this site, but not all of them since the site doesn’t have rights to screen every game, just the major tournaments and occasional series.

Finally, it is difficult to find anyone who is streaming all five days of the longer version of cricket (Test Cricket) online. If you can get past all the pop-up ads, the small screen, and poor image quality then Crictime is probably the best place for you watch cricket live online. The great thing about Crictime is it has six servers and the site streams just about every game live. This is a great last resort website for the cricket junkie who must see five days of every game.

Are you a cricket fan? What type of cricket game is your favorite?