Photo Credit: England & Wales Cricket Board
In a world first, Sky Sports and The Hundred have come together to unveil ground-breaking technology as part of the new 100-ball cricket competition – player avatars using motion capture are now available to use in The Hundred app and Sky Sports app.
A selection of The Hundred’s top female and male cricket players’ full movements have been captured and brought to life digitally, allowing fans to bring their favourite player’s moves straight into their homes.
The avatars have been created using ‘MetaStar’, Dimension Studio’s hyper-real avatar solution and the AR experience created by Arcade (an immersive experience creative agency, using Unity). The idea was born out of a collaboration between The Hundred and Sky Sports, in a bid to take fans closer to the action, making cricket more accessible and interactive for sports fans, with the ambition of enticing in new audiences.
Not only will the avatars enhance the spectator experience, they are also being used to improve Sky’s TV broadcast coverage, as The Hundred puts digital innovation at the heart of the viewing experience. The avatar technology is one of the strongest examples of this vision – providing progressive digital and mobile interactivity for fans to try out.
Heather Knight, Adil Rashid and Nat Sciver are just a few household names fans will recognise that have been turned into avatars.
To celebrate the launch of the avatars in the apps, The Hundred is giving away two tickets to the sold-out finals on 21 August. To be in with the chance of winning, and see your heroes play for real, simply download The Hundred app and share a picture or video of yourself, family, or friends with one of the Avatars on Instagram, follow @TheHundred and tag #thehundredavatars to enter.
The Competition will be open for entry between 1:00pm Thursday 12 August 2021 (“Start Date”) and 11:59pm on Wednesday 18 August 2021 (“End Date”). Entries received outside of this period will not be valid and will not be included in the Competition. Terms and conditions can be found here.
You can view full videos of the avatars in action here, as well as a demonstration video on how the avatars were made hosted by Freddie Flintoff here.
Download The Hundred app on iPhone or Android to try out the Avatars and enter our competition via Instagram for your chance to win two tickets to the sold out The Hundred Final.
Name of Author: ECB
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is the national governing body for cricket in England and Wales, formed on January 1, 1997. It combines roles from the Test and County Cricket Board, National Cricket Association, and Cricket Council, and integrated the Women’s Cricket Association in 1998. Based at Lord’s Cricket Ground, the ECB oversees all levels of cricket, including national teams for men, women, and various disability categories.
