Cricket Player Bets

As many as people are, so are their tastes and preferences. So it is quite normal for some fans to watch only football matches, others basketball, etc. When it comes to online sports betting, however, nobody will dispute that there is hardly anything more to be desired from cricket as it provides the opportunity to bet on a myriad of markets ranging from simple outright bets to markets requiring profound cricket knowledge.

Player bets are an exceptionally engrossing market category due to their multiformity and the fact that they are not subject to the same forecasting principles as other conventional types of bets. It is for this reason player bets are sometimes referred to as exotic bets that put emphasis on individual players’ performance rather than the one of a certain cricket team. What makes them even more interesting is that your bet being successful has nothing to do with the final outcome of the match or tournament. A player can be the best performing batsman even if his team fails to finish as a winner.

Top Batsman

The Top Batsman bet is a top choice for betting aficionados who wish to wager on cricket star players. For this market, punters need to predict which batsman, regardless of the team, will score the greatest number of runs during the match. The usual favorites in this category are Babar Azam, Aiden Markram, Rohit Sharma, Dawid Malan, and Quinton de Kock. Since they are often expected to have the highest result, wagering on each of them will not add a significant amount to your bankroll due to the low betting odds.

То properly assess which player is most likely to get the highest score, several factors need to be taken into consideration:

• Current shape of all participating batsmen.
• Level of performance of opponent’s bowlers.
• Batting position – top order, middle order (upper and lower), and tail enders.
• Type of wicket – bowled, caught, leg before wicket, hit wicket, hit the ball twice, run out, stumped, timed out, handled the ball, or obstructing the field.
• Type of pitch – green, dusty, or dead.

Each of these indicators comes with varied importance depending on the cricket format currently being played. For example, the batting position is of utmost importance when a T20 match is played since opening batsmen have a massive advantage over everybody else. So, there is not much sense to bet on a player from the lower middle order to score the greatest number of runs. However, this does not apply to the longer-running Test matches where sound technique and adaptability to field conditions come to the front. If it turns out that two or more players manage to score the same number of runs, whether they are from the same team (Top Batsman) or from both teams (Top Match Batsman), they will be death-heated. If you have placed your bet on such a cricket player, you will be paid half of the odds, if there are three players with the same result, you will receive one third of the eventual payoff, etc.

Top Bowler

In terms of popularity, the Top Bowler bet comes right after Match Winner and Top Batsman, especially for punters who are confident in their cricket knowledge and prefer betting on individual players. When performing top bowler wagering, betting enthusiasts are basically predicting which player will take the most wickets in a particular innings of a match, which is why it is also called a Wicket-Taker bet.

The cricket bat and ball are in constant battle, with the batsmen trying to score as many runs as possible for their teams, while bowlers do their best to stop them and take wickets as quickly as possible. Betting rules for the Top Bowler wager are simpler in T20s and ODI matches since teams only bat once. So you only have to decide which of the proven successful bowlers will manage to take the greatest number of wickets in the first (and only) innings. As it is possible for two or more players to finish with the same result, the dead-head principle described above is again applicable. Many online bookmakers, however, prefer to cut the number of these cases down and also take into account how many runs the respective bowlers have conceded. Let’s look at an example and imagine you are betting on “New Zealand Top Bowler”. If Kyle Jamieson and Tim Southee both take three wickets but Jamieson surpasses Southee with 38 vs 25 conceded runs, the first will be considered the top bowler.

In Test matches, punters may be offered the opportunity to place a Top Bowler bet within the second innings, most often in the form of a live betting market. In spite of this match feature, not all online cricket sportsbooks have included it in their portfolios, so you better check the available betting markets prior to funding your betting account and placing your bets.

Betting on who will be the top wicket-taker is a wager category for which it is not a good idea to only look at the overall statistical data for a particular cricket player. Bowlers like James Anderson are almost unbeatable on home soil and betting on him for a match being played in England is a wise decision. His results outside his home country are not so undisputed, however, and you better think twice before backing him with a bet in a match conducted in India for example. Among other factors for making a correct prediction are the pitch type, the particular cricket format, and the venue.

Man of The Match

It is time to introduce you to a cricket player betting market that is not as straightforward as the ones already described but that is why it is especially intriguing and represents a great way to put your knowledge of the sport into practice. What makes the bet difficult to predict is its subjective nature which cannot knuckle under to dry statistical data.

For a player to be declared as the man of the match, he needs to have an overall outstanding contribution to the game, a combination of scoring winning runs, taking wickets, and positive impact on the other cricketers on the field. Let’s look at the betting odds currently provided for a match between West Indies and England.

The bookmaker has put two batsmen, an all-rounder, a bowler, and a wicket-keeper on the first five positions which is proof of the complexity of this type of cricket bet. Another thing that makes an impression is that according to the odds, both team captains have very good chances of becoming a Man of The Match. This is logical given that a part of their responsibilities is to communicate with every teammate and make sure he is doing his job which in turn leads to a great team’s overall performance.

The most attractive aspect of the Man of The Match betting is the lucrative odds it comes with. As you can see from our table above, even if you bet on Joe Root who has the lowest betting odds, a stake of $10 will give you a profit of $55 which is not bad at all. A fact that is also worth mentioning is that the Man of The Match award goes to a player from the winning team in almost 100% of the cases. This statement perfectly overlaps with the data above – most of the players in the table are representatives of England and it is this country that is the Match Winner favorite with odds of 1.9 vs 3.6 for the West Indies.