Cricket fans all over the world are clearing their schedules for the next few months as the Indian Premier League gets into full swing and county cricket returns for the English summer.
Since its inaugural season in 2008 the Indian Premier League has become a massive commercial success that attracts star players from all cricketing nations.
Playing the Twenty20 version of the game, nine teams with colourful names such as the Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders, take part in the two-month extravaganza, which is generally considered the richest competition in cricket.
Back in the home of cricket, fans are looking forward to the more traditional appeal of the English county game.
As ever, the summer will also be punctuated with a couple of Test Match Series and one-day internationals. The visitors to England this year are New Zealand and a mouth-watering Ashes battle with Australia.
No matter where you are or which Nokia you have, you’ll never be far away from this feast of cricketing action. We’ve selected a couple of the best cricket apps for both Nokia Lumia and Nokia Asha devices.
Yahoo! Cricket (Nokia Lumia – free)
This is a fantastic and comprehensive cricket app with some excellent lock screen features.
There’s the latest news, live scores, fixtures and photo galleries of the latest action. If you like your cricket statistics, then you’ll also appreciate the archive of recent matches with full bowling and batting records.
My favourite thing about this app is the lock screen options. You can choose to have the latest cricket photos and also updates of live matches on your lock screen. If that’s not fancy enough, this app also responds to voice commands.
Cricket Videos (Nokia Lumia – free)
The chief attraction of this app lies in its title: the ability to watch cricket videos on your Nokia Lumia smartphone.
Not all the videos I tried worked (possibly because of regional rights issues) but many of them did. It was very cool to be able to watch highlights of recent England games on my Lumia 820.
In addition to the video highlights packages, the app also offers latest score boards, player biographies, galleries and a Live Tile of new matches.
ESPN Cricinfo (Nokia Asha – free)
People with Nokia Asha devices are also well served with a host of cricket apps and games in the Nokia Store.
Of the bunch, I think ESPN Cricinfo is the most authoritative for news, results, fixtures and live scores. The results section is also exhaustive with Test, Twenty20 and one-day matches all covered in a wealth of statistical detail.
Cricket Calling (Nokia Asha – free)
The strength of Cricket Calling is its coverage of live matches. The scoreboards refresh automatically and you can also follow ball-by-ball text commentary.
During the quieter moments in a match, there’s also a forum where you can interact and chat with other like-minded, or perhaps not so like-minded, cricket fans.
Enjoy the cricket and let’s hope the rain stays away.