Australian Cricket Betting Guide 2024

Cricket Match Betting

Some cricket punters back a winner before the match gets under way. That is because most bookmakers, recognising the importance of the toss, offer odds on which team captain will call correctly. Of course, none of them offer even money or better about heads or tails and the market is, therefore, one strictly for mugs who have no idea about value. It is amazing how popular betting on the toss is.

When it comes to betting on the actual match, cricket punters are spoilt for choice.

Naturally, betting on the result – home win, away win or draw – is the most popular market, but there are several exotics that attract significant turnover, particularly top batsman and top bowler.

Top batsman sounds subjective but it is not. Basically, it is a market on the highest scoring batsman in a particular innings. In some limited-overs games, especially Twenty20 matches, it pays to concentrate on the batsmen at the top of the order because they may be the only ones who get a hit.

Top bowler sounds subjective also but it is not, with the winner being the bowler who takes the most wickets in an innings. A maximum of 10 wickets fall into an innings so, usually, any bowler that takes four or more wickets has an excellent chance of being adjudged the market winner.

Other cricket match betting exotics that have developed a following in recent years include opening partnership (which team will score the most runs before losing its first wicket of the game), first innings lead (which team will score the most first-innings runs) and man of the match.

There is an official man of the match named for every Test, One-Day International and Twenty20 International, while many domestic competitions hand out similar player awards.

Cricket Futures Betting

Futures betting is not something that captures the attention of cricket punters very often, with the exceptions being for major Test series such as The Ashes between Australia and England and the Cricket World Cup that takes place every four years and determines the best one-day team.

For a series such as The Ashes, cricket bookmakers bet on not only the basic outcome of the series but also the correct score. And Australian punters love nothing more than to back their cricket heroes to whitewash the Poms 5-0.

Always Look To Oppose the Test Draw

Often Test matches do not last the allocated time and the jibe aimed at cricket – that the teams play for five days and then it ends in a draw – could not be further from the truth, especially in the modern era of attacking cricket.

It is possible to make a good profit by continually laying the draw on betting exchanges or backing both sides with bookmakers. The fact that Indian punters love to back the draw, largely irrespective of price, means that sensible punters who pick and choose their spots can make money.

Draws, even on the Indian subcontinent, have become less common since the Steve Waugh-captained Australia team of the late 1990s and early 2000s, inspired most Test sides to throw caution to the wind and play with more panache.

Get To Know Messrs Duckworth and Lewis

The Duckworth-Lewis method is the mathematical formulation that cricket authorities used to determine the winner of weather-affected limited-overs matches. One must have a sound grasp of the D/L method when betting on limited-overs games, either during the innings break or in the run.

Never Bet Before the Toss

The toss really matters in cricket and sometimes one can write off a team that calls incorrectly before a ball is bowled. Never bet before knowing who is batting first.

Identify Live Betting Oportunities

One would be hard pushed to think of a sport better suited to live betting than cricket and it is little surprise that many Test matches generate millions of dollars in turnover on betting exchanges such as Betdaq. There are specialist cricket punters out there who make a decent living from trading games, using the fluctuations in odds to develop books that produce profits regardless of the final result.