Cricket Video Clips

There are some great cricket video clips online, often of epic cricket moments. And, for now, they’re free! But finding what you want at a suitable picture quality can be quite a challenge.

This is because most video search technology still lags behind the sophistication of a keyword based content search for a web page. Then, once you’ve found what you want, the picture resolution is still subject to the quality and perhaps legality of the original recording.

These clips are snippets of recorded highlights, indexed by a few keyword tags to attract your content search. But unlike a static web page, the body of the video contains sounds, not text that can be found by a search engine. So, if the keywords don’t match your search, you won’t find what you want. Try “Sachin batting at Sydney” in Google Video – you’ll get a zero return.

However, video search technology took a big step forward in 2007, with the launch of Blinkx. Their search engine listens to a video’s audio content using speech recognition, and translates this into text, to match video content with a search query. Try “Sachin batting at Sydney” in Blinkx search and you’ll receive a vast number of returns, many of which are close to your query.

So, until Google Video, YouTube and Metacafe catch up with Blinkx technology, your search for “cricket video clips” will result in a multitude of randomly sorted results, of variable quality. You could try Search for Video, a video search engine that pulls together cricket video from all the major video sites. And, an unusual source of great cricket video clips is the Masterclass at NatWest, current sponsors of ODI cricket in the UK. This features some great, in-depth batting coaching by Michael Vaughan.

Once you’ve found that prized video clip, will the picture quality be good enough? A good quality full screen video needs dimensions of 1024 x 768 pixels, but a picture this size is slow to download. So, finding good quality is a balance between picture size and resolution, and the average sized video clip can only be viewed clearly in smaller windows. Even then, if the original picture quality is poor then the clip will still make for fuzzy and frustrating viewing.

As much of the original, licensed cricket video content was transmitted on TV, the best quality video clips are provided by the TV channel with rights to the original film. Try the cricket video clip libraries at ESPN or the BBC for the best selections. The ESPN Legends of Cricket collection includes some classic video clips, as well as some 19th century stills of W G Grace, that clearly show his uncompromising attitude to cricket!

Most of the clip content on social networking sites is user generated, often from TV recordings or home videos, and these copies just don’t match up to the original. YouTube and Metacafe both have fun collections of cricket video clips for sharing, but are of variable quality.

However, TV quality viewing is slowly coming to the internet. A beta version of Joost was launched in 2007, providing reasonable quality full screen programmes. However, due to licensing restrictions most of its content is restricted to users in North America, where interest in cricket is limited, so Joost isn’t a good place to see cricket video clips just yet.

But, better quality video and a good choice of cricket clips are to be found on Veoh TV and Stage6. These 2007 video sharing sites provide high quality video pictures - better than many of their competitors. Veoh also allows you to watch every piece of free video on the Web - potentially a copyright risk - but its an excellent product. And, you can also download clips to view later.

Cricket video clips are ideal for watching on the internet and on mobiles, and are great for discussion by the user generated content communities on social networking sites. However, live cricket is still best watched on TV, until online picture quality reaches TV standards. While clips are free and while match streaming remains pay-per-view, this is likely to remain the case.

And finally, my favourite cricket video clip? It has to be Wasim Akram in the 1992 World Cup. Wasim's lightning quick bowling and formidable fielding was simply too hot to handle. Enjoy!

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