Willow - Watch Live Cricket

Review by eFreeware

Following cricket across different competitions usually means juggling a handful of sources: one place for a live feed, another for highlights you missed overnight, and a third for the short clips that circulate after a big finish. Keeping track of what is on, and when, takes almost as much effort as watching.

Willow by Cricbuzz, from Willow TV International, sets out to gather that material into a single app. It covers live matches, on-demand video and short-form clips, and it is free to download on Android with ads and in-app purchases. The pitch is straightforward: one app for the cricket you follow, rather than several.

Matches, replays and clips in one app

The center of the app is live cricket, streamed in Full HD for subscribers. Alongside the live feed, Willow carries match highlights, individual clips and full replays, so a game you could not watch as it happened is still available afterward. For anyone who follows tournaments across time zones, that combination matters more than any single feature.

The developer has also built out the browsing side. There is a dedicated Watch tab for video, and match cards that summarize a fixture so you can see what is on before committing to a stream. Smart filters and curated playlists help narrow a large catalog down to the teams, competitions or formats you care about, which is the difference between an app you open with intent and one you scroll through aimlessly.

Short-form cricket and a quicker sign-in

Buzz content is the app's short-form layer: brief videos built for a quick look rather than a full session. It sits alongside the longer highlights and replays, and it gives the app something to offer in the gaps between matches, when there is no live play to watch but you still want cricket on screen.

Signing in uses OTP verification, so there is no password to create or remember. The developer pitches this as a faster, more secure way to get into the app, and for anyone who has abandoned a streaming service because of a forgotten login, the appeal is obvious. Signing in with your existing Willow account also unlocks Cricbuzz Premium.

What a subscription covers, and the cost of free

Live cricket in Full HD is tied to a subscription, and the app supports in-app purchases. If you already pay for Willow elsewhere, the developer says you can use that same subscription here and pick up the Cricbuzz Premium extras at no additional step. That continuity is the strongest argument for existing subscribers, since it avoids paying twice for the same cricket.

The app is free to download but carries ads. I would treat that as the ordinary trade-off of a free sports app rather than a flaw in itself, and it is worth knowing before you install. The rest of the app, including highlights, replays and Buzz clips, is described as available for browsing and viewing, with the live HD tier sitting behind the subscription.

The latest update and the Hide Score option

The most recent release adds a Hide Score preference, which lets you suppress scores while you are in the app. For anyone who has ever opened a streaming app to watch a delayed replay and had the result spoiled by a scoreboard on the way in, that is a small but thoughtful addition, and it fits an app whose on-demand side is meant to be watched after the fact.

The same update brings bug fixes and improvements, the routine maintenance that keeps a streaming app usable over time. Willow has been on the Play Store since October 2014 and was last updated on October 1, 2026, so this is a long-running app that continues to receive attention rather than one that was published and left alone.

Who Willow is built for

This is an app for people who already follow cricket closely and want a single destination for it. If you watch live matches, catch up on replays the next morning, and like the short clips that fill the space between fixtures, the mix here covers all three without sending you to separate apps. The Watch tab and match cards are built for that routine.

The subscription is the pivot. Willow is most useful to someone who already holds a Willow subscription, because the developer says that subscription works here and brings Cricbuzz Premium features with it. Someone starting from scratch is looking at a paid live tier plus ads on the free side, which is a reasonable arrangement for a dedicated follower and a harder one to justify for a casual viewer who only tunes in for the occasional tournament.

A streaming home for committed cricket followers

Willow by Cricbuzz does one thing and does it broadly: it puts live cricket, highlights, full replays, match cards and short-form clips in one place, with OTP sign-in and a Hide Score option for delayed viewing. The 4.0 average from 3,742 ratings and more than 500,000 installs suggest a settled audience rather than a novelty, and a decade of updates points to an app that is still being worked on.

I would point it at cricket followers who want their live and on-demand viewing together and who either hold a Willow subscription or are ready to take one out. The ads and the paid live tier are the price of entry, and the app is honest about both. For that audience, the combination of a live feed, a replay library and quick clips in a single app is the reason to install it.

What's new

Hide Score is now available under preferences Bug fixes and improvements