Summer is almost upon us, and for Aussies that means a great Cricket season is almost here. Cricket Australia is getting ahead of the curve with two brand new Google Assistant apps you can use on your phone, Chromebook, TV or Google Home.
There’s two apps available to check out, Cricket Australia Trivia and Cricket Australia Live. You can find both of the apps in the Google Assistant app explorer by tapping the blue icon in Google Assistant or by going to ‘Explore’ in the slide-out nav drawer in the Google Home app.
Cricket Australia Live
The Cricket Australia Live app is aimed at getting you the information you need about Cricket games being played by Aussie teams. Later in the summer that will mean Sheffield Shield and of course the Ashes matches, but for me it was showing the Cricket Australia XI, our domestic mens 11 playing in the JLT Cup.
To call the Cricket Australia Live app you can either just say ‘Talk to Cricket Australia Live’ to Assistant or Google Home (or mini), or you can just ask it direct questions to go straight to the meat of the question with commands :
- Talk to Cricket Australia Live to get the current score
- Talk to Cricket Australia Live to get the latest news
- Talk to Cricket Australia Live to get the next match
- Talk to Cricket Australia Live to get wickets
Cricket Australia Trivia
Once you’re up to date on what’s happening in the Cricket, you can entertain yourself in the next tea or lunch break during the next test by playing a Trivia game with Buff (aka Darren Lehmann. It’s a quick game that you can also play on your phone or TV (running Android TV 6.0+) if you don’t have a Google Home.
The game is hosted by Darren Lehmann, so you hear Buff in all his gravelly voiced glory throwing questions your way. To spark it up on your Home or Assistant just say ‘Talk to Cricket Australia Trivia’. In theory you can say ‘Play Cricket Australia Trivia’, but that didn’t quite work for me so you may want to check back on that command. Once you get going you simply play a three question trivia game, with questions asked one after the other:
If you’re not a Cricket fan, you may want to get in contact with your favourite summer sports governing body to find out where your Tennis, Nippers or other sports Google Assistant app is, for now I’m going to play another round of trivia.
