Explain the benefits of css sprites?

All the small icons will be on one image and It will minimize multiple file download hence increase your page load speed.

Sprites use mostly for rollover image, remember old conventional rollover of button, icons etc where we define2state of image on is for up & one is for over the problem with old style rollover was that when user rollover the image over state take time to download as it dosen't download when browser render the whole html page there was some fixes like giving negative x & y bakground position to load the over image with page render also remeber more images means more http request so get rid with this problem concept of sprites introduced where we can create single image for both state so it makes sure that we don't have multiple http request & image render with page load.