Attention cricket fanatics (fanatic?): ESPN is adding 1,000 hours of cricket coverage to ESPN3.com. The cable channel has inked multi-year deals with the International Cricket Council and the Champions League Twenty20, ensuring matches will be plentiful on the digital channel through 2015.

The deal also includes the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup, one of the most-watched sporting events in the world (though we suspect not in the U.S.).

“It’s a big day for cricket fans in the U.S., and we’re thrilled to be the network offering this passionate and underserved audience more cricket coverage than ever before,” said Damon Phillips, Vice President, ESPN3.com in a statement. “We’re removing the traditional pay per view barrier and making these world class events available to millions of fans.”

Like all ESPN3.com programming, viewers will need to get their high speed internet from a provider that pays ESPN for the privilege of carrying ESPN3.com.

More information after the jump.

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The American Society of Magazine Editors released the nominations for the 2010 Digital Ellies, and one of sports media’s best is among the finalists.

The blog of Sport’s Illustrated‘s Joe Posnanski was nominated in the “Blogging” category. His competition: IEEE Spectrum’s Automation, Glenn Greenwald’s Blog on Salon, Sunset’s One-Block Diet, and Tablet’s The Scroll.

Soon after Joe Poz took the SI gig, we asked him where his blogging would fit into his new job responsibilities.

“We’re all waiting for the job to kind of evolve. I definitely am very involved in the Web and very involved with the magazine. Trying to figure out scheduling and how all that’s going to work is something we’re still in the process of doing, but it looks like I’m going to be doing quite a bit of column writing for the magazine’s front-of-book Scorecard section. I’m still going to be writing a lot for the Web site, whether it’s something they pick up from my blog or something I do specifically for them. We’ve already planned several fairly big pieces for the magazine. It’s definitely going to be across the board — which is exactly what I want. What makes Sports Illustrated so great to me is that there are so many different outlets, so many different formats for me to write for them.”

We’d say he figured it out. Good luck, Joe.

(H/t Erik Malinowski, who edits Wired.com’s brilliant sports blog, Playbook.)

Hours before Carmelo Anthony was traded to the New York Knicks, the forward paid a visit to Conan.

As expected, the interview is awkward at times but Conan O’Brien saves it at the end with the custom jersey he’s created for Anthony.

There’s plenty of good news heading into the weekend’s NBA All-Star Game. The league sports a group of great young stars. The game itself is in Los Angeles, which makes everything better. And the ratings continue to be strong.

According to Sports Media Watch, “ABC earned a 3.4 final rating and 5.163 million viewers for Miami’s loss to the Celtics Sunday afternoon. The game drew the highest rating for an early afternoon NBA game (start time prior to 3 PM ET) since Christmas Day 2005, and the highest for a non-Christmas early game since February 2002.”

In fact, “five of the 20 highest rated regular season games on ABC since ’02 have taken place this season alone.”

The NBA is posting excellent numbers on TNT as well.

David Stern can’t touch the success of the NFL, of course, but he has to be pleased with the direction of his league. Well, until the lockout comes, that is.

The following post is from TVNewser co-editor Molly Stark Dean.

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta anchors a three-part series on the topic of head injuries in football, which will be airing Monday through Wednesday on “American Morning.” The first segment, airing on Monday, features former quarterback Kurt Warner and former linebacker and coach Jack Pardee. Pardee is participating in a University of North Carolina study involving dementia among former football players.

“I played 15 years in the NFL, and they would allude to you getting your bell rung, and the trainer would check you out and ask if you knew your name and where you were,” the former linebacker said to the Houston Chronicle. “And if you could answer, you were ready to go back in the game.”

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Major League Baseball, you have a problem.

Last night’s Monday Night Football game featuring two backup quarterbacks in Kerry Collins and Trent Edwards drew a 7.2 over night rating, which was higher (6.5) than Game Three of the American League Champion Series.

Not even the New York Yankees, baseball’s most popular team, was enough to beat the NFL head-to-head in one of the worst MNF matchups since TBS started airing the League Champion Series in 2007 between Tennessee and Jacksonville.

Did everyone have Chris Johnson (Thanks for nothing, Jacksonville) on their fantasy team last night and that’s why you couldn’t flip over to watch Cliff Lee dominate the Yankees?

Move over, baseball. Football is officially king in the United States.

More hockey? Sure.

The NHL announced its preseason broadcast schedule, and it’s significantly more extensive than last year’s. How so?

“This is the most comprehensive coverage of the pre-season ever on the Network with 40 hours of live game broadcasts and 78 hours total of live and delayed broadcasts,” read a release.

The puck drops with a tripleheader on September 21. The Philadelphia Flyers battle the New Jersey Devils followed by the Ottawa Senators vs. the Toronto Maple Leafs, and then the Vancouver Canucks against the Calgary Flames. The regular season begins on October 7.

The rest of the schedule is after the jump.

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