Cricket has an illustrious history dating back to the 16th century where it started as a children’s game in medieval England and was soon adopted by adults as a rigorous test of athletic skill, physical endurance and strategic thinking. Today the game is followed all over the world, but nowhere does it have more fans than it does in India. Likewise IPL, Indian Premier League is one the most popular crickets leagues globally with almost all Asian, European and North American bookmakers taking action on it. As covered in our article Cricket Betting Sites, some European bookmakers are now heavily focused on attracting Indians to wager at their website and now offer accounts in Indian currency (INR – rupees).
Online Cricket Betting Sites in India
Types of Cricket Bets Offered
The most popular wager in cricket is a straight bet on who will the match. So-called “Match Betting” allows a bettor to choose a side, such as the Mumbai Indians to defeat the Rajasthan Royals. If the prediction is correct, a payout is made at pre-agreed odds, which may be expressed as fractions, decimals or money lines.
Two other popular forms of cricket wagering are Series Winner and Outright Winner. The former is offered when teams play more than one game in a series, such as The Ashes contested over five matches by England and Australia. The latter refers to bets made as “futures” or “ante post” on a single team to prevail in a tournament or season, such as the Chennai Super Kings to repeat as IPL Champions, or Mumbai Indians to repeat as CLT20 Champions in 2012.
Bets which are not directly related to the final result of a cricket match, series or tournament are known as proposition bets or “props.” They include team propositions, from which side will win the opening coin toss to whether a team’s total score will be over or under a certain number of runs. They also include player propositions that a based on individual performances.
Among the most popular player props are Top Batsman, Top Bowler and Man of the Match. Wagers can be made on whether a given player will score 50 runs or more and how many wickets a specific bowler will take during a series. One much enjoyed category of player props is Batsman Matches, pitting one player against another. The goal is to pick which one will score the most runs, get the most sixes, win the “Race to 10 Runs,” and similar head-to-head challenges.
For more details on wagering options see our article titled Types of Cricket Bets.
Live Cricket Betting with In-Play Markets
A rather new and special variety of cricket bets available to punters relates to “live” cricket betting. Thanks to so-called “in-play” or “in-running” markets, bettors can take a stake in the action ball by ball as play progresses. Typical live bets include Runs Off Next Ball, Method of Next Dismissal and Next Man Out, to name just a few.
This kind of cricket betting is offered almost exclusively online through the introduction of live streaming video and audio feeds. Much like matches have been brought to television by satellite broadcasting, these feeds bring action in real time directly to the computers of bettors, who can watch each play as it unfolds and make timely bets accordingly.
This format can take a bit of getting used to initially. Brief delays in transmission are common, at least partly due to differences in bandwidth available and buffering times required by users’ computers. The lag can be a distraction and sometimes interfere with bets being accepted. Odds change quite rapidly, too, which requires full attention to the match and opportunities being presented.
However, this betting form only continues to improve, greatly expanding the number of cricket markets available and adding additional excitement to every over in a match. One of the most recent innovations introduced is a “Cash Out” feature, which allows an in-play bettor to lock in a profit or limit a loss with just a click while a game is in progress.
To learn more about this form of wagering see our page titled Live Cricket Betting.
Developing a Cricket Betting Strategy
Given all of these cricket betting opportunities, it really is necessary for those who seek to profit regularly to come up with a winning strategy for wagering. That requires spending some time studying the history and statistics of teams and players, which thankfully is available in abundance online. For an example refer to the Indian Premier League website.
A good first step in making the leap from recreational punter to savvy handicapper is to limit the scope of wagering. There are far too many leagues, teams and players in the world of cricket to become knowledgeable of them all. Selecting a specific league, such as the IPL, helps narrow the focus of research and makes the task manageable.
Match Betting is the cornerstone of any good cricket betting strategy. As much as half of one’s wagering activities will be related to picking winners. That’s why it pays to become prolific in handicapping as quickly as possible. Criteria to be examined include team form, player trends and weather forecasts as well as the conditions of the pitch and ground. Handicappers will also want to seek out the best odds available, comparing prices offered by many bookmakers before wagering.
In this website’s section on cricket betting strategy, there is a list of top tips from some of the world’s most successful handicappers. From which types of wagers to avoid to where to look for top values, there is plenty of good advice for those who wish to develop an approach to cricket wagering that succeeds time and again.
Online Cricket Betting
The two most popular sites for Indians to bet cricket online are www.bet365.com and www.williamhill.com. Each of these sites accepts both Moneybookers and Neteller deposits, allows Indians to register accounts using their home address. However, Bet365 also takes deposits, issues withdrawals and accepts wagers in Indian Rupees (INR). William Hill does not accept INR. Regardless, both sites also use the Pound, Euro and Dollar see our page on cricket betting sites.
History of Cricket Betting in India
Getting back to the history of cricket, after the game was adopted by adults it became so popular that it soon spread throughout the Commonwealth of Nations, gaining a following among colonists in the West Indies at the start of the 18th century. In 1721, the mariners of the British East India Company brought cricket to the Indian sub-continent and by the early 19th century, it had reached Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Although international matches were being played as early as 1844, official Test cricket was not introduced until 1877. By then, cricket betting had already been established as lucrative offering of British bookmakers. Today cricket is a highly regarded professional sport, enjoyed in more than a hundred countries around the world. The global organizing authority is the ICC or International Cricket Council (formerly the Imperial Cricket Conference), which oversees the sport’s major international tournaments, including the Cricket World Cup. The ICC is also responsible for appointing the referees and umpires who officiate at sanctioned Test matches, One Day Internationals (ODIs) and Twenty20 Internationals. The ICC Code of Conduct establishes the professional standards of discipline for cricket played internationally.
In each cricket-playing region, domestic leagues have developed, too. In the U.K., these include the County Championship Division One & Two and the Pro40 National Leagues One & Two. In India, the Indian Premiership League (IPL) is cricket’s primary focal point, now featuring ten teams and an exciting annual tournament to decide the IPL Champion.
Although some nations continue to block efforts to legalise cricket betting on their own soil, wagering on league play and international match-ups has become a huge industry worldwide thanks to the Internet. In India, while gambling is illegal, law enforcement has never been active when it involves using a home internet connection to access an online bookmaker located abroad. As you can see on our page Rupee Bookmakers, there are safe and secure options for Indians to wager online in rupee where hassle free payouts are offered on wins. Now that we’ve established it is possible to wager online, let’s cover the type of cricket bets offered.
As always if you’re going to bet any sport online, we wish you the best of luck and also encourage you to wager responsibility. Thanks for reading our article on cricket betting.
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