About cricket
It may be hard to believe, but Cricket is the second most popular sport in the world. It is the national sport of England and its popularity is due to the spread within the British Empire. Cricket is now played in countries like India and Pakistan that have very large populations and help it become very popular. Cricket betting has increased due to its popularity and many people are discovering how to make a good profit with cricket bets.
Cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has 104 member countries with the 10 test playing countries having greatest popularity.
William Hill
William Hill is great for cricket betting. They are one of the biggest highstreet bookies and are just as big on the Internet. New customers are rewarded with a £25 free bet.
Types of Cricket
- First-class cricket
- Limited overs cricket
First-class cricket
The most popular type of first-class cricket is test cricket. A test cricket match is an international event between two teams that are full member of the ICC. This currently includes England, Australia, South Africa, The West Indies, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Test matches can last up to 5 days and each test match usually has a “series” of 3 to 5 matches. This means that a Test can sometimes last 3 weeks.
The most famous Test cricket series is The Ashes. This 5 test series is played between England and Australia every 2 years and dates back to 1882. In 2010 Australia currently have the most series wins, (31) while England tail by 3 on 28. In the past the Ashes results were fairly even, but Australia dominated the competition from 1989 to 2005 which led to them retaining the Ashes for a sixteen year period.
Despite Test cricket being the highest standard of first-class cricket, the first class name is normally used to describe domestic competition only. For example, the County Championship in England and Wales.
Limited overs cricket
Cricket World Cup is a type of limited overs cricket designed with matches that can be completed in day matches. The tournament is held every 4 years, with the next one in 2010. There have been 9 tournaments since 1975 with Australia winning 4 of them.
Twenty20 cricket (T20) is a new form of cricket developed in England in 2003 and has now spread globally. The idea was to create a more exciting form of cricket that had a shorter duration. Twenty20 matches have batting for a maximum of 20 overs and last around 3 hours making it a lot more of a spectator’s game.
Twenty20 has international and domestic competitions. Every 2 years there is an ICC World Twenty20 tournament (T20 World Cup), with the last one ending in May 2010.
There are now many domestic T20 competitions as well. One of the most famous is the Indian Premier League. In England and Wales the Twenty20 Cup is held involving eighteen counties in three divisions.
Cricket betting
Betting on Cricket is popular, but considering it is the second most popular sport in the world, people don’t always seem confident in placing bets.
Cricket betting has a lot of markets available to bet on like most sports, and when there are major competitions like the Cricket World Cup you can often get many more. Our tip is to keep things simple. You can bet on the outcome of a match. This will have 3 possible outcomes – win, loss or draw. You can bet on most things in the game including things like Top Batsman. However this could have up to 11 different outcomes! The objective is to find a market that has few outcomes, but still good odds.
Bet365
Bet365 are one of the biggest online bookmakers. They offer a big match bet of up to £200 for some great cricket bets.
Remember there are always free bets you can get as a new customer to most sportsbooks!
Cricket is a game where stats are very important and can play a big role when predicting your cricket betting choices. First off you can assess the current form of a team/player. Past form is never going to guarantee future performance, but it is a lot better than just guessing! You can predict outcomes by looking at stats too. Take each team and look at their last 5 to 10 games. Add up some of the figures. Take runs for example. Add these up over the total games (5-10), then divide by the number of games to get their average per match. If one team has a much larger average number of runs than the other, then it could be a good bet to make!
