Cricket fever has gripped the nation once again as 2014 ICC T20 World Cup has begun in Bangladesh and it will only intensify as the tournament progresses. Today, the traditional rivals—Pakistan and India—are head-to-head against each other and it only seemed fitting that we brought you the top free Android apps to keep yourself updated regarding the live game on your smartphone in case you do not have access to enjoy the game on a big screen.
Following are our top picks for live cricket scores, download and enjoy:
5. Cricket Live Score
Live score implements a minimalistic approach for the overall user-interface and displays only very basic information on the display. You’ll have to click your way through many a screens in order to get where you want to go. Some of the features of the app are:
- Live match commentary
- Cricket news
- Quick scorecard and Full scorecard
- IPL schedule and points table
The app is ad-supported and not very fast or responsive; overall experience is a little gimmicky but the redeeming feature of this app is simplicity and choice of minimalism.
Get this app from Play Store here: http://goo.gl/vJbmYN
4. Yahoo! Cricket
Yahoo’s Cricket application for Android offers all basic cricket-related updates in a simple package. App has four major sections, namely Matches, Teams, News and Photos, which all provide related information from Yahoo’s live news sources. Some of the features that the app has to offer include:
- Real-time updates of ongoing matches
- Specialized photo gallery
- A port-folio of international cricket teams, players and related statistics.
One might imagine an app from a company like Yahoo to be among the best but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be the case here. The app is only average at best as far as the UI and overall experience is concerned. Details are mostly but not necessarily up-to-date. The live results-fetching may also suffer from different issue but the app is ad-free and there are some features that are not present in other applications, hence it is present in our list!
Get this app from Play Store here: http://goo.gl/826zea
3. NDTV Cricket
NDTV’s Cricket app features an interface that is very similar to that of Cricbuzz. There’s a horizontally-scrollable panel for ongoing and upcoming fixtures on the top, and under it are the latest news headlines and gallery-panel. Live text-commentary and an updating scorecard are present for the recent matches as well. Other features include:
- Trending social updates and photos from the web
- Match schedules and venues
- Teams’ and players’ statistics and rankings and more
In-app scorecards and commentary are updated automatically, which is a nice feature. The app, fortunately enough, doesn’t sell ads; however, the overall usage experience is only above average due to slow loading and minor hiccups here and there. This doesn’t mean that it is an inferior offering, only that it needs slight improvements which could help it become one of the top contenders in the category.
Get this app from Play Store here: http://goo.gl/AG5Ava
2. Cricbuzz Cricket Score & News
Cricbuzz Cricket Score & News offers such a detailed insight into the game that is only paralleled by ESPN’s offering for Android. Cricbuzz shows:
- Live scorecard and text-commentary for the ongoing matches
- News articles from the web
- Points table for the most recent tournaments
- Photo gallery
- Players’ and teams’ rankings and statistics, records and achievements
- Social trends and tweets from famous cricketers and analysts and more.
The app is free, and is supported by ads. The scorecards are updated live and the experience is quite rich. The app’s UI is simple enough to navigate through easily without getting lost in details and the overall performance is quite satisfactory. Do try this app if you find that ESPN’s app is not living up to your taste.
Get this app from Play Store here: http://goo.gl/dPSy2
1. The ESPNcricinfo Cricket App
ESPN’s cricinfo service is well-known for the cricket-lovers. It is a web-based portal where text commentary and scorecards are displayed and updated live. ESPN’s Android app expands on the same vision and adds a number of other features to this portal as well. Some of the major ones among these are:
- Live scorecard and ball-by-ball updates in the form of text commentary
- Latest news from ESPN’s website
- Fixture reminders and live notification updates for the subscribed fixtures
- Audio and video podcasts from ESPN channel
- Feed of trending blog posts and photos from the web
The app is free to use. Our only gripe are the ads that take up some space on the screen’s bottom but it’s a price you’re going to have to pay in order to enjoy a good amount of detail on all-things-cricket. Other than that, the app is fabulous and feature-rich. The interface may seem overwhelming to some at first use but all the details that add up to create it become a necessity after using the app for some time.
Get this app from Play Store here: http://goo.gl/CoaO1g
There you go, we’ve done our job by compiling the best offerings in the game of cricket for Android. Download them and do tell us what you think!
