Just a short while ago, it was nearly impossible to watch cricket live and legally in the United States. We were forced to watch dodgy pirated streams, or highlights on YouTube, or follow the ball by ball on Cricinfo.
Oh my how much has changed.
Which is why a year or so ago I started the World Cricket Internet Schedule for US Viewers. It is exactly what it says it is: a guide as to which matches are going to be streamed legally on the Internet, where to watch them, and when (all times eastern) – specifically for those of us living in the States. And tonight I took the time to update the schedule for the entire summer, from the Tri-Nation series in the West Indies that starts this week through to the end of the Ashes – (I have yet to add the England vs Australia one-dayers, but I will get them up there soon.)
And there is a lot coming up. In fact, there will be International Cricket live and legal online for 37 of the next 60 days. That’s right, nearly two thirds of your summer could spent doing nothing but watching cricket. Sounds alright to me…
The tournaments include:
– The aforementioned Tri-Nation (West Indies, Sri Lanka, and India) series in the Caribbean
– South Africa in Sri Lanka
– India in Zimbabwe
– The Ashes
ESPN3.com will be showing the first two series, and they have really picked it up with regard to broadcasting cricket – so it must be working for them, which is great news for us fans.
Some other notes regarding the guide:
– If you are planning to take a vacation and don’t want to miss anything, the longest gap between matches is August 14th through August 20th
– Ireland has a packed International calendar – and Cricket Ireland might very well stream some of their matches online – I will get them added as I find out
– As with everything else in life, the guide is subject to change
Do check it out – and cheers!
Limited Overs 
i’m stoked ESPN is showing more, and hopefully will get some more test cricket at some point (dammit bangladesh, have more home tests!). what bummer SA vs SL has no tests. i’d love to see steyn steaming in at sangakkara or herath steaming (well, you know what i mean) towards amla
i can’t imagine them putting anything on the television though, unless they get some high profile t20 matches. wimbeldon and the french open might be big enough to take up most of a day on espn2, but it would take aaaages for any old game of cricket to do that.
Regarding ESPN and Tennis, do check out this interview of John Skipper from ESPN. http://m.hollywoodreporter.com/news/espn-john-skipper-keith-olbermann-574231
He has some interesting points about the future of International Sport on television here in the USA.
Matt, a couple of additions. The ICC is streaming (has streamed) most of the WCL matches remaining, although they are notoriously bad at announcing it in advance. That will include Ireland vs Netherlands. An actual non-infinite world cup qualifier.
ICC Europe will be streaming the semi-finals and final of the European T20 qualifiers, if you like your cricket Danish, Italian or something else.
And the ICC will be streaming the Women’s WT20 qualifiers from Ireland.
You can grab the dates of those games from my <a href="http://idlesummers.com/calendar.php"Calendar page. I have a lot of bad things to say about the ICC but they are slowly getting their shit together on the streaming front.
Thanks, Russ! I will get those up.