How to hover a span element using image sprite - html

Question

I am wanting to use an image sprite for a hover action, but I've been working on it for an hour and can't get it right. The span element video-play-q-right has the sprite as its background.
Here is my sprite:
Here is a screenshot of the divs:
Here is the html:
<div class="video-box">
<div class="video-img">
<a href="#" onclick="window.open('http://url.html','photoessay','scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,width=800,height=600')">
<img src="resources-na/images/video.jpg" width="200" height="155" border="1">
<span class="video-play-q-right">play</span></a>
</div>
<div class="video-text">
<p><strong> of Water</strong>.<br /> water's properties. (05:43 min)
... View</p>
</div>
</div>
Here is the CSS:
.video-box{
padding-right: 20px;
float: left;
width: 200px;
}
.video-img {
background-color: #EEEEEE;
border: 1px solid #DDDDDD;
margin-bottom: 0 !important;
padding: 4px;
width: 200px;
height: 155px;
}
.video-play-q-right {
background: url("../images/video-play-q-big.png") no-repeat scroll 0 0 transparent;
background-position: center top;
height: 50px;
position: absolute;
text-indent: -9999em;
width: 50px;
left: 321px;
top: 127px;
}
a.video-play-q-right:hover span{
background-position: center bottom;
}

Answer 1

Why a.video-play-q-right:hover span ?
There's no link with video-play-q-right class. Try to replace it with a:hover .video-play-q-right
a.my-class:hover span means " a link (a element) with class my-class which contain a span ".
So it will target this:
<span>Some text</span>
But not this:
<span class="my-class">Some text</span>