The data pipeline
Live cricket data flows from official scorers and feed providers through aggregation layers that normalise scores, overs and ball events into API responses.
API providers refresh match state as deliveries are recorded. Your app polls or receives updates and renders them in the UI.
Polling vs push
Most cricket REST APIs use polling. Your server requests /matches/live every 10–30 seconds during active play. WebSockets are rare in cricket APIs; polling with smart caching works well at scale.
See our article on polling vs WebSockets for a deeper comparison.
Caching layer
Never call the API from every client directly. Proxy through your backend, cache in Redis with short TTLs and fan out to users. This reduces costs and protects your API key.