Betting Blog
RCB lose favourites tag after slow start
It's early days yet in the 2017 IPL, but after two defeats in their opening three matches, the pre-tournament favourites, Royal Challengers Bangalore, are already losing ground in their bid to claim a maiden title
ESPNcricinfo staff
11-Apr-2017
It's early days yet in the 2017 IPL, but after two defeats in their opening three matches, the pre-tournament favourites, Royal Challengers Bangalore, are already losing ground in their bid to claim a maiden title.
RCB, 7/2 favourites before a ball had been bowled, have slipped out to 13/2. Their latest defeat came at the hands of Kings XI Punjab in Indore, where not even the free-scoring return of AB de Villiers could shake their batting out of its current torpor. With Chris Gayle dropped and Virat Kohli injured, de Villiers made 89 not out from 46 balls, but was unable to farm enough of the strike to keep Hashim Amla and Glenn Maxwell at bay.
Instead, the new favourites are last year's champions, Sunrisers Hyderabad - RCB's conquerors in the opening round, and most recently too good for Gujarat Lions, thanks to the Aussie pairing of David Warner and Moises Henriques. At 7/2, they lead the field from Kings XI (4/1), with two other former champions, Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders, lurking with intent in the middle of the pack at 11/2.
Full postDurham's resolve may overcome the odds
Chester-le-Street is one of the most impregnable home fortresses on the circuit, and Durham's sense of grievance could well manifest itself in a singularly focused push for justice
ESPNcricinfo staff
03-Apr-2017
The second tier of the County Championship doesn't tend to attract much interest these days. It remains first-class cricket in name, but it is decidedly second-class in status, with the gulf between the haves and the have-nots widening by the year.
But this year's Division Two race is intriguing nonetheless, not least because it will feature for the first time ten teams rather than nine, following the decision to whittle the top flight down to eight to make it more streamlined for the T20 era.
And it also features two undoubted heavyweights of recent English vintage - Nottinghamshire, last year's top-flight wooden-spoonists, who are 7/4 favourites to bounce straight back up as champions. And Durham, who deserve far deeper consideration than their 25/1 outsider status suggests.
Full postYorkshire favourites to recapture Championship crown
The first round of County Championship fixtures get underway on April 7, and there's no doubting which team Bet365 backs to scoop the spoils come September
ESPNcricinfo staff
27-Mar-2017
The clocks have leapt forward and the scent of mown grass is in the air, so it stands to reason that the new cricket season can only be a matters of days away. The first round of County Championship fixtures get underway on April 7, and despite their near-miss in last season's title run-in, there's no doubting which team Bet365 backs to scoop the spoils come September.
Yorkshire, champions in 2014 and 2015, and vanquished at the last by Middlesex last season, are 2/1 to be crowned county champions in 2017, their skinny odds a testament to how regularly the cream rises to the top over the course of a full first-class season.
That said, it's not been all sweetness and light for Yorkshire in the interim. They parted company with their inspirational coach, Jason Gillespie, last summer (to add insult to injury, he's now signed up with Kent as a short-term fix for their own coaching woes) and with debts mounting and a stand-off with Leeds council threatening their future at Headingley, their off-field issues cannot be ignored either.
Full postSmith v Kohli could decide destiny of series
Despite his poor recent run of form, Virat Kohli remains the bookmaker's favourite to score the runs that will restore India to winning ways in the fourth Test
ESPNcricinfo staff
22-Mar-2017
It might not have seemed feasible during his all-conquering exploits against England in recent months, but Virat Kohli is human after all. How else to explain his series tally of 46 runs in three Tests against Australia, at the meagre average of 9.20? That said, it takes more than a short-term downturn in form to dissuade the bookmakers of the merits of a genuine superstar of the sport, and despite everything, Kohli remains Bet365's favourite to top-score for India in the fourth and final Test at Dharamsala.
At 12/5, Kohli is fractionally more favoured than Cheteshwar Pujara (3/1), despite the latter's double-century in the drawn third Test at Ranchi last week - an innings that spanned 525 balls, the most ever received by an Indian batsman in a Test innings. In the bowling stakes, the spin twins Ravi Ashwin (6/4) and Ravi Jadeja (15/8) lead the field, which is no great surprise seeing as they have claimed 39 of the 55 Australian wickets in the series so far.
As for the Aussies, well, no-one gave them a prayer coming into the four-match series, but now, after a famous win in the first Test and a fighting draw in the third, they have a puncher's chance of achieving one of their most famous overseas series wins of all time. And so much of their success has resided in the form of their captain, Steve Smith, whose No.1 world ranking has been bolstered by two centuries of exceptional quality.
Full postIndia expected to continue winning ways
After a stunning victory in the opening Test at Pune, Australia's underdogs were brought back down to earth by Virat Kohli's India in Bangalore
ESPNcricinfo staff
13-Mar-2017
The ongoing series between India and Australia has contained enough ebb and flow for a full five-Test series, and we are only two matches down out of four. After a stunning victory in the opening Test at Pune, Australia's underdogs were brought back down to earth by Virat Kohli's India in Bangalore, but not before setting them another seriously stiff test of their fighting abilities.
And now the series moves onto Ranchi, with the scoreline locked at 1-1 but the momentum, imperceptibly, shifting back to the hosts. That much is apparent from the pre-match odds with Bet365, who reckon India are now 4/7 to complete a series win in the four-match rubber, with Australia a more distant 5/1. Even the draw, at 11/4, doesn't hold out much hope for the visitors.
An interesting indication of where the match may be won and lost comes from the market for Man of the Match. Despite the stunning heroics of Steve O'Keefe in the first Test and Nathan Lyon in the second, it is India's spin twins, R Ashwin (4/1) and Ravi Jadeja (7/1) who are deemed the likelier bowlers to claim the spoils, with Kohli (9/2) strongly backed to bounce back from his relative form blip and produce a show-stealing performance with the bat.
Full postEngland eye clean sweep after sealing series win
England's batsmen made heavy weather of a modest chase of 226 in the second ODI against West Indies in Antigua, but with the series in the bag, there's a 3-0 clean sweep to aim for
ESPNcricinfo staff
06-Mar-2017
England's batsmen made heavy weather of a modest chase of 226 in the second ODI against West Indies in Antigua, but with the series in the bag and a 3-0 clean sweep to aim for, Bet365 doesn't envisage any major slip-ups as they head into Thursday's final fixture in Barbados.
England were heavy favourites in the pre-series stakes and remain so now - you can get odds of 1/3 on their third win of the tour, as opposed to 12/5 for a West Indies consolation win. And even if do stumble, you can pretty much bank on them making more runs in the first 15 overs, with Jason Roy and, potentially, Alex Hales set to lead the line. West Indies' Kraigg Brathwaite has his merits at the top of the order, but he is not known for his free-scoring.
That said, it's been a bit of an attritional series, with the slow surface in Antigua favouring those batsmen who don't mind taking their time to build an innings - in particular Eoin Morgan in the first match and Joe Root in the second. They are 3/1 and 9/2 respectively to be England's top-scorers at Bridgetown, where the conditions aren't expected to be significantly different.
Full postEngland strong favourites to exact World T20 revenge
They may be world T20 champions, but West Indies in one-day cricket are a somewhat less formidable prospect. At least, that is the assessment of the odds-setters at Bet365, who have England as strong favourites to wrap up a comfortable win in the three-ma
ESPNcricinfo staff
03-Mar-2017
They may be world T20 champions, but West Indies in one-day cricket are a somewhat less formidable prospect. At least, that is the assessment of the odds-setters at Bet365, who have England as strong favourites to wrap up a comfortable win in the three-match ODI series that gets underway in Antigua today. While you can get a West Indies 3-0 win at 33/1, the same scoreline for England is 23/20
And not without good reason. West Indies have not won a bilateral ODI series since 2014. Since 2008, when they defeated Sri Lanka, they have only enjoyed one ODI bilateral series victory against what might have been, until recently, one of the big eight (in 2012, against New Zealand).
The last time they played ODI cricket, they failed to qualify for the finals of a tri-series involving Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. They didn't qualify for the 2016 ICC Champions Trophy and, unless they improve their ranking by the end of this September (they need to be in the top eight; they are currently ranked ninth), they will not qualify for the 2019 World Cup. They're not in a dry spell; they're in a famine.
Full postCan Stokes and Mills help deliver IPL glory?
The stars of Monday's IPL auction were undoubtedly the England duo of Ben Stokes and Tymal Mills, who were snapped up for £1.7 million and £1.4 million respectively by Rising Pune Supergiants and Bangalore Royal Challengers
ESPNcricinfo staff
21-Feb-2017
The stars of Monday's IPL auction were undoubtedly the England duo of Ben Stokes and Tymal Mills, who were snapped up for £1.7 million and £1.4 million respectively by Rising Pune Supergiants and Bangalore Royal Challengers. But will their acquisitions help deliver some elusive silverware to the two franchises, who have yet to lift the trophy in its previous nine seasons?
Well, to judge by the pre-tournament betting at Bet365, both teams are very much in the running, with RCB - last year's beaten finalists - rated as the 7/2 favourites before a ball has been bowled.
Bangalore have a batting line-up featuring some of the most formidable hitters in the world game, not least the captain Virat Kohli, who is the world's outstanding batsman across all formats at the moment. But Mills' ability to bowl at regular speeds in excess of 95mph, as well as change it down with a devastating slower ball (just ask Yuvraj Singh, who was utterly bamboozled during last month's T20 series) could prove vital at the front and back of the innings.
Full postAustralia unfancied to pull off India series win
Steve Waugh famously described a tour of India as the 'Final Frontier', and that was back in the early 2000s when Australia's global hegemony was more or less unrivalled
ESPNcricinfo staff
15-Feb-2017
Steve Waugh famously described a tour of India as the 'Final Frontier', and that was back in the early 2000s when Australia's global hegemony was more or less unrivalled. His men failed, in legendary fashion, on the VVS Laxman-inspired 2000-01 campaign, but with Adam Gilchrist in temporary command four years later, they made impressive amends.
More recently, however, Australia's tours of India have been pretty ghastly affairs - none more so than the 2012-13 campaign that resulted in a 4-0 whitewash and earned global infamy for the so-called 'Homeworkgate' affair. The challenge of slow, turning tracks has exposed a number of shortcomings among Australia's batsmen, who have found their traditional belligerent response to adversity cuts no mustard against spinners of India's quality.
And so, there's little optimism on offer in the pre-series stakes at Bet365. India are 1/6 to complete a routine series win, with Australia a distant 10/1 to wrap up a surprise result. Virat Kohli's men laid an impressive marker with a 4-0 pasting of England before Christmas - a series that concluded with back-to-back innings wins in spite of England twice posting 400-plus totals in the first innings.
Full postEngland still Champions Trophy favourites despite India loss
Despite the indignity of last week's stunning meltdown in the third ODI against India, England's cricketers remain slender favourites to end one of the longest trophy droughts in world cricket
ESPNcricinfo staff
07-Feb-2017
Despite the indignity of last week's stunning meltdown in the third ODI against India, England's cricketers remain slender favourites to end one of the longest trophy droughts in world cricket and lift their first piece of 50-over global silverware, when the ICC Champions Trophy gets underway in June.
It wasn't, admittedly, the ideal finish to a tough tour, as England lost their last eight wickets for eight runs in 19 deliveries at Bangalore to slump to a 2-1 series loss. However, England in early summer is deemed by the odds-setters at Bet365 to be an entirely different prospect to the spin- and bat-dominated subcontinent.
At 11/4, Eoin Morgan's men are a nose ahead of Australia (7/2) in the pre-tournament stakes, while South Africa - another team with a famously flimsy record at the main global events - are currently 4/1. Given that they routed Australia 5-0 late last year and are on the brink of doing likewise to Sri Lanka, they might yet be a sound bet.
Full post