England vs Sri Lanka Wrap
It is said that Tai Chi is one of the most deadly forms of martial arts – it’s just slowed right down so the old and overweight can keep up. Test Match Cricket is like that, we have the old (Misbah-ul-Haq, Chris Rogers, Adam Voges and Younis Khan), the plump (Inzamam-ul-Haq, Shane Warne (before his mum helped him out) and of course Jesse Ryder) – but despite this, Test Match cricket is arguably still the most skillful of all forms of cricket.
Much like Tai Chi and Test Match cricket, TipBetPro-Cricket had a slow start with just the one series in May/June, and only a couple of bets placed in that series. But thankfully both were winners, and cricket may yet prove to be one of the most deadly forms of betting for TipBetPro (and we mean deadly for the bookies bank accounts…).
We started the series with the bookies well and truly underestimating how dominant England would be, but the stats told TipBetPro that we could be very confident in an English victory (90%+). So confident were we in the first game that even with the prospect of losing over a day’s play to rain (the model told us we could lose almost 2 days) we took the $1.56 Win-Draw-Loss bet…and won.
At the same time we also placed a bet on England to win the series by 1.5+ (so either 2-0 or 3-0) at $1.58 – with the first victory out of the way, we were on our way to making a bit more profit from this series.
Unfortunately due to England’s annihilation of Sri Lanka in the first test the odds came in for the next two tests. We also became slightly less confident in England winning as quickly and easily when Woakes replaced Stokes (although Woakes ended up performing better than others) and some of the Sri Lankan youngsters climbed the rankings (i.e. they got a ranking). Both these factors led to “No Bet” recommendations in the 2nd and 3rd tests, which was a blessing in the 3rd test as too much time was lost and England wasn’t able to finish the job, but they did seal up a 2-0 series victory and handed us our second winning bet.
On a tipping front (on a no-draw basis) we tipped England to win each game and it was only rain that cost them in the third. So a 100% record on that front too – but that was the same as the favourites and wasn’t difficult to predict.
A good start in a new sport, but unfortunately not too much action in the series with just a couple of bets taken, and just over 1 unit of profit between them (at 50%+ though!). With not enough stats to make a decent chart like AFL or NRL, I have used some extrapolation based off this first test series and come up with the following graphical representation of how much money we should expect to make from cricket over the coming season:
*actual profits and experience may differ from those shown above
Coming up in July/August there have been 5 series with 15 tests between them announced, with many of these likely to provide a better contest (and hopefully more betting opportunities) than the England v Sri Lanka series. We will likely predict England to beat Pakistan at home (although not as easily as they beat Sri Lanka), India should have the West Indies covered quite easily (even out of their sub-continent home) and Australia should have be able to have a win away from home against Sri Lanka (although we expect Sri Lanka to perform better on their own turf). The Zimbabwe vs New Zealand series should be a one-sided affair (although given Zimbabwe haven’t played a test in nearly 2 years, player stats may be limited!) but South Africa vs New Zealand could be the series of the season.
Series predictions and bet recommendations will be released once squads and teams are known. Until then there will be plenty of AFL and NRL action and maybe even a cricket article or two coming your way.
Cheers
