The Cricket Yorkshire Awards: Best Use of Video Award

Best Use of Video Award
WINNER – Illingworth St Mary’s Cricket Club

Illingworth St Mary’s Cricket Club are the best example of using FrogBox livestreaming I’ve come across yet.

Of course, there are all kinds of ways you might use video to promote grassroots cricket. Cricket Arena’s bite-sized clips on Tik-Tok won them the ‘Best Use of Social Media’ category but interviews, presentations or drone footage are other routes.

Illingworth St Mary’s Cricket Club livestreamed all home games, as well as representative games played at the ground (e.g. a Halifax Junior CL Zwingo T20 U19 fixture.

This received over 42,000 views across the year (admittedly down on the 1.6 million the year before but they didn’t have Asif smashing his car window this time).

They shared over 3,000 hours’ worth of cricket at Illingworth being watched, they are something of a trailblazer in the Halifax Cricket League.

At least a third of next year’s Premier Division clubs are hoping to offer livestreaming, as well as other clubs further down the league.

They provide two highlights packages per game in addition to the livestreaming on a Saturday – a condensed version (approx 2 mins long) that features all the boundaries and wickets from the match in one bitesize video.

That’s perfect for quick browsing, whilst there’s an extended version, which has fuller highlights from the match in a less frenetic manner.

Also on YouTube, Illingworth have uploaded various ‘Shorts’ videos, which have attracted a good number of views. These are created for outstanding catches, strange shots and other notable events that they manage to capture on video.

I like the livestreaming option for clubs because it is ready-made content to be shared that’s happening every week anyway. Funny or controversial clips can be shared or a booming six.

There’s also the scope for some passive income through running adverts on YouTube which will just tick over during a year.

It’s a really effective way to promote existing sponsors and attract new ones. Here’s some thoughts when I watched Illingworth St Mary’s versus Oxenhope at home.

Coaching is another way to use livestreaming; something Illingworth St Mary’s have done. For bowlers who felt that they weren’t at their best in 2022, they took some footage from this season and put it side by side with some from 2021.

That flagged up a few technical tweaks relating to release points and how they approached the wicket. Footage has also been used to help coach players about the effectiveness of backing up when in bat at the non-striker’s end.

Demand for video content is enormous and it can be used across various social channels and your club website to get the most impact.

Congratulations to all of the Cricket Yorkshire Award winners and those who were Highly Commended.

I wasn’t able to shortlist everyone who entered but there will surely be opportunities for further interviews on the website.

You can see all the winners of the 2022 Cricket Yorkshire Awards here.

The full list of Awards winners is below, you can click on each category to take you to separate articles, explaining how the nominees excelled and what they did.

Best Cricket Website (League)
WINNER – Bradford Mutual Sunday School Cricket League

Best Cricket Website (Club)
WINNER – St Chad’s Broomfield Cricket Club

Best Use of Social Media
WINNER – Cricket Arena

HIGHLY COMMENDED – Illingworth St Mary’s
HIGHLY COMMENDED – Bradford Mutual Sunday School Cricket League

Cricket Photo of the Year
WINNER – Mike Britland (Sowerby St Peters)