HOW TO BET ON CRICKET Gambling can be addictive. Please play responsibly. http://responsiblegambling.betfair.com Offers many opportunities to trade. Cricket offers some of the best trading opportunities in sport. There’s a televised match virtually every day and plenty of bets matched across a wide variety of markets. Plus, there are many aspects of this sport that can affect the outcome of each match and innings. FORMATS AND TOURNAMENTS There are five main cricket formats: 1) 5-day international Test Matches. These are usually played over a series lasting up to five matches. 2) 4-day matches between English counties. Broadly the same betting principles apply as for Tests. 3) 50 over per side matches, which usually involve international sides. These are usually part of a series, or a multi-team tournament such as the World Cup or ICC Trophy. 4) 40 over per side matches between English counties in the CB40 Trophy. Betting strategies for these are basically the same as for 50 over matches. 5) 20 over per side matches. This involves four main club tournaments and an international scene. The biggest club tournament is the Indian Premier League, played over six weeks in April. In England there’s the Twenty20 Cup. Australia hosts the Big Bash and finally there’s the Caribbean T20. There’s also the Champions League Twenty20, while international sides compete for the World Cup. 2 MOST POPULAR MARKETS Match: Match winner, Test Match End, Completed Match Innings: Total runs, Session Runs, Top Team Batsman 3 1) Know the players, their skills-set, preferred formats and conditions Get to know the players. While some perform across all formats most tend to reserve their best cricket for ideal conditions and format. It’s possible to be the world’s best in one format while a non-entity in others. Only the very best can perform well in all conditions. GENERAL RULES FOR TRADING For example, most batsmen from the Indian sub-continent have failed to make the same impact when touring England, Australia and South Africa. They learn the game and play mostly on Indian pitches, which tend to be slow, with much lower bounce than in other countries. For similar reasons, English players have rarely produced their best on sub-continent pitches. 2) Learn to read how a pitch will play and whether it will deteriorate Pitch conditions are pivotal and reading them is one of the keys to successful betting. The pace of the pitch, how much help it offers to bowlers and how quickly it deteriorates will have as great an impact on the outcome of a match or an innings total as the players themselves. You should always have an opinion on whether the pitch will favour batsmen or bowlers and which type; how it will be playing later in the day or in Test matches, tomorrow; what the run-rate will be in both the short-term and over the course of the innings and match. 3) Understand the impact of the weather Overhead conditions not only determine whether there is to be play or not, but the nature of the match. If there’s plenty of cloud cover, swing bowlers will enjoy a marked advantage and batting totals are likely to be substantially lower than average. If the sun’s out, those faster bowlers will receive much less assistance, transferring the advantage to the batsman. Constant sunshine will bake and break up the pitch, favouring spinners later in the game. 4 When bad weather causes the number of overs to be reduced in one-day matches, a complex formula known as the Duckworth Lewis method is used to reset batting totals. This can have a huge impact on the match winner market and needs monitoring. 4) Expect dramatic turnarounds and don’t be deterred from taking huge prices In-running drama is almost a given in this sport, with 25/1+ upsets a regular occurrence. In Tests, the draw often trades extremely short before the pitch suddenly deteriorates and teams often fail to chase down supposedly easy targets in all formats. The runs total markets regularly see massive upsets. A fairly frequent scenario involves a team losing its last five wickets for less than 50 runs. Alternatively, teams quite regularly hit 70+ runs off the last five overs in T20. In both scenarios, some very short-priced bets will have lost. STILL STUCK? Head to www.betfairlearning.com 5) Study stats and past results at each ground Before trading any match, check out past results at the ground in question, using a tool like Stats Guru on www.cricinfo.com. Past trends will offer useful clues to the match winner, pitch characteristics, innings totals and run-rate. 5 1) The formbook stands up, with home advantage particularly significant Whereas limited overs matches tend to be closely matched, there are many onesided Test matches. Often analysis of the teams, weather and ground stats will point in one clear direction. When it does, don’t be afraid to take short odds as there are many rock-solid favourites in Test cricket. TEST MATCH STRATEGIES Home conditions offer a significant advantage. Consider the results of India, the 50 over world champions and usually a strong challenger for the top Test ranking. Since the beginning of 2009, they’ve won 10 out of 15 home Tests, losing only once. Away from home, they’ve only won four from 20 and lost their last eight to England and Australia. Yet in those two away series, because India are of the same standard in general terms, neither home side was prohibitively priced before landing comprehensive victories. Even when the odd upset does occur, the clues are often there. For instance South Africa, a top team with a daunting home record, have lost their last four Tests at Durban. In the last two, the opposition were big-priced outsiders. 2) Lay the draw on pitches likely to deteriorate Trading the draw price in-running offers a chance to utilise all your stats and pitch analysis. Most pitches deteriorate sharply as they get older, making life tough for batsmen as bounce becomes uneven and cracks aid the spinners. It’s perfectly normal for a pitch to yield 400+ runs in the first innings but less than 150 in the fourth. Over the first three days when the pitch favours batsmen, the draw price invariably collapses, based on a false assumption that conditions won’t change. When they do, wickets tend to tumble in quick batches, dramatically transforming the match and markets. Matches often produce results despite the draw trading heavily odds-on. Always maintain a good idea of how many overs remain in the match and whether there will be time for the changes to take effect. Study past innings totals at the ground to identify scoring trends. 6 3) Back ‘Under’ in runs market once partnerships hit milestones Just as the draw price can over-react to good batting, so too can innings runs markets. If two batsmen establish a decent partnership, their team’s run line will rise with more or less each run. Partnerships can’t last forever though and were to some extent already priced in at the initial quote. When a wicket falls, more often follow as new batsmen struggle to settle. The potential for a batting collapse and dramatic betting turnaround is always live and many odds-on bets are turned over this way. As a rule, it might pay to blindly back unders every time a partnership hits a milestone like 100 or 150. STILL STUCK? Head to www.betfairlearning.com 7 STRATEGIES FOR 40 AND 50 OVER MATCHES 1) Wait until the first innings is complete before taking a strong view on the match winner Although 50 over matches are famous for nail-biting close finishes and volatile betting, there are many one-sided matches. Sometimes a particularly advantageous toss stacks the odds in one direction. Sometimes the team batting first is bowled out and fails to set a meaningful target. Until a substantial part of the first innings has been completed and the pitch been assessed, there’s uncertainty about what represents a good total. It makes sense to spend the first part of the match focused on the innings runs markets, finetuning that pitch analysis and forming strong opinions for the second innings run chase. 2) Use the ground stats to study past totals and run-rates Ground trends are pivotal here. Study past totals and run-rates at different stages of the innings. Some pitches yield a fast early run-rate, only to slow up later in the innings. Some grounds have small boundaries, offering the potential for very fast scoring during power plays and the end of the innings, but are hard to accumulate runs on during the middle of innings. STILL STUCK? Head to www.betfairlearning.com 8 1) Back extremes, especially on run lines Meticulous study of past ground stats is essential here. STRATEGIES FOR T20 MATCHES One distinction from 50 overs matches is teams’ batting strategy. Over the longer format, teams tend to share similar tactics - attack during power plays and at the death, while accumulating singles during the middle overs. In an ideal T20 plan, the team hits regular boundaries from start to finish. If it comes off, extremely high scores are possible, which will always be available at big prices. If it doesn’t, wickets can tumble fast and a team fall well short of setting a challenging total. So, backing very high or very low totals at big prices often pays. Pre-innings run lines in IPL tend to average around 160. Of 73 completed first innings during the IPL, seven saw the team fail to score 120, while 19 scored over 180. The big innings tended to come on predictably conducive grounds - in this case Bangalore, Delhi and Jaipur. Any study of past results there would have indicated these were ‘overs’ rather than ‘unders’ grounds. 9