A Guide to Cricket Betting

Cricket is considered by a lot of sports bettors to be one of the best sports to bet on due to the nature of the game. For the savvy punter who’s willing to do a little research there are some very attractive possibilities for some great returns and sites like BetFair offer a wide variety of betting markets for most cricket matches. You can find the latest odds at https://www.betfair.com/sport/cricket.

There are five main types of cricket match:

• Fifty-over per side matches. These are generally international matches played in a series or tournaments like the ICC trophy or the World Cup.
• Forty-over per side matches. These are mainly played in the CB40 Trophy by English county sides. Betting on forty-over per side matches is very similar to betting on fifty-over per side matches.
• Twenty-over per side matches. These matches are often played as part of big club tournaments such as the Australian Big Bash, the Caribbean T20, the Indian Premier League, and the English Twenty20 Cup, as well as the main international club tournament – the Champions League Twenty20.
• Five-day Test Matches. These are International matches that are usually played as part of a series (such as the Ashes) and consist of up to five matches.
• Four-day matches. These are generally played between English counties and betting principles are similar to those of Test Matches.

On sites like Betfair the most popular markets when betting on innings are total runs, session runs, and top team batsman. When betting on matches the most popular markets are match winner, test match end and completed match.

There are many things to consider when betting on cricket. The most common factors to look at are batter performance and pitch condition. Batters from hotter countries don’t tend to perform quite as well in colder climates, the reason for this is because they are used to playing on slower and dryer pitches that have less bounce.

The deterioration of the pitch during a given tournament is also a major concern for sports bettors betting on cricket matches. The speed of the pitch will change and this will be an advantage to some bowlers but not to others. It will also affect the run rate, potentially slowing players down. So doing a bit of research on the teams and the pitches as well as studying past performances will give you an advantage when considering a wager.