HOW TO BET ON CRICKET - BETTING GUIDE & ADVICE
Thanks to the different forms of cricket, the game should have a lot of appeal to different punters. From the long slogs of Test Match cricket through to the blistering pace of Twenty 20, cricket can be a pretty dynamic sport to bet on. As engaging as the sport can be, sports betting, particularly live in-play betting really lends itself well to cricket. Numerous markets can add tremendous excitement not only on a cricket tournament but on individual games themselves.
How to bet on Cricket
The obvious place to start for cricket betting is just by picking a 1×2 outcome. A decision over who will win the match. The draw should never be counted out when looking at the match outrights for a cricket match. They happen, so don’t dismiss them. But there are a lot more markets to enjoy than that obviously, on whatever form of cricket or whatever tournament you are looking at, be it the One Day Internationals, IPL Betting or the ICC Cricket World Cup.
Find yourself a good bookmaker which covers cricket well and with only a handful of Test nations it is generally pretty easy to see who is in form and who is not for your match outright bets. Match outrights then naturally move a punter forward to series betting, choosing which nation will win a Test Series or a ODI for example.
Types of Cricket Bets
Along with the Match and Series bets, you start looking at other markets. When it comes to the Series betting in cricket you can even take a longer look at the Correct Score for a contest. An alternative to that would be looking at Total England Wins in a series for example. Don’t forget about those drawn matches and a nation can win a five match series 1-0 with as much potential as they have in winning the event 5-0. There are also options to have an Innings victory if you want a shorter term wager on who simply will come out on top in a particular innings.
Who wins the coin toss can be a huge factor in first innings betting, because pitch conditions will either favour a batting or a bowling team. If you are an avid cricket follower then you could look at Top Batsman or Top Bowler for England in a match or a series. A little bit of knowledge helps here, knowing who is in form, knowing how a certain player performs against the type of opposition they are facing (such as spin bowling for example) and the pitch condition is mightily useful.
Bets on the individual players have become extremely popular with cricket punters. Ahead of a series you can pick the total runs for a Batsman for example, which will be an over/under decision. The top scorer in the first innings, the numbers of centuries scored, the first five-wicket haul and so on. Cricket betting options are bountiful.
Live In-Play Cricket Betting
You can usually get a good feel about how a Test is going to go by watching the first day of action. If a batting side has dominated then the likelihood of the match being a draw is raised a little. If a Test has gone to a fifth and final day then the side bowling may have an advantage if the pitch is spinning and they are facing a team who struggle again the spin. These are dynamic factors of cricket betting and this is where live in play betting comes in. The use of live betting to offset your match outright is a great way to go.
Let’s say you picked England in the match outright but they are chasing 220 runs on the final day with seven wickets left and are facing the spin of India. Things don’t look good, so you could lay them (oppose them) by looking at live betting markets in which you will profit from an Indian victory and potentially cover the stake lost on the England outright wager.
Cricket betting advice
There are a lot of variables in cricket betting that a lot of punters won’t realise. Everything from how short the grass on the wicket is, to the weather conditions will either help or hinder a team’s performance on the field.
Always, always look back at cricket stats (check out Cricinfo) and look at things like the history of recent meetings and then say you are looking at Ashes Series betting, look at the details of recent clashes in England, if that is where the tournament is being hosted.
Again, cricketing conditions in England are going to be vastly different from those in Australia. In no other sport do the conditions affect the outcome as much as they do in cricket. Fortunately cricket is stacked with statistical back up.
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