To kick things off I was going to give a brief breakdown of myself and my betting but I’ll do that next week as I want to do something that was relevant.

The cricket one day world cup kicked off on the 19^th February and to be honest it would appear to be quite low key. Maybe all the hype was used up on the Ashes and with England’s inconsistent one day form probably means too many aren’t as interested.

So what to bet on then?
Well for starters it’s already underway but so far it’s pretty much been the minnows against the seniors. It’s only warmed up in the last few days.

I must confess I’ve left the tournament as a whole alone but before the start I quite liked the look of Sri Lanka.  If I was to back a side it would have to be one of the sub continent sides. They’re going to be use to the slower pitches and those slower bowlers that have bowled in these conditions could have a huge impact.

I’m interested to see how Australia does with their all out pace approach but one team that looks interesting are South Africa. They have a very strong batting line up followed by a couple of decent opening bowlers and the addition of Imran Tahir in the spin department could be a major plus.

Anyway the main thing I wanted to talk about is trading on the cricket. I don’t know how many of you out there like cricket but I’ve found it has the marmite effect. Personally I love cricket particular the art that is test cricket anyway enough of that.

The reason cricket can be a good trading ground is due to the big swings in prices but coupled with a decent time window. You will obviously see most of these big swings in the one day or 20/20 games.

My personal favourite and I think the easiest strategy to implement is laying the bowling side when taking early wickets.
When the batting side lose an early wicket or even two they will always look to settle and ensure no more wickets are lost. Were trying to take advantage of those that are over reacting to the wickets and going against the grain can prove to be very profitable. You will hopefully now see the batting teams odds slowly increase as the they settle and so does the market.

Let’s look at an example

West Indies v South Africa just the other day in the very first over WI lost Gayle and the inevitable happened people over reacted and drove the price down on SA.

So perfect lay for us as SA are 1.17 as you can see in the image I placed a £5 lay at this price.

Within just a few minutes the price has started to creep up and I’ve place a back bet on SA at 1.25 for £4.70. This has allowed me to spread the profit across both selections for the famous greening up effect.

This is just a quick example as the price continued to go up as WI built a nice little partnership and if I was trading it I would have backed at higher.

That was a nice easy one unfortunately its not always plain sailing and WI could have lost another wicket after we’d laid SA. This is one of the reasons I like to lay as opposed to backing because the liability is lower on the laying side plus you’ll find more liquidity on the shorter price.

If WI had lost another wicket you have to either cut your losses or let it ride. These are the decisions you have to make but the important thing is not to panic WI will still try to stabilise their innings so you should see the price come up after the overreaction even if it’s a case of limiting your losses.

One other tactic is to scalp on things like 4 or 6’s. This is a simple get in and out after a couple of ticks profit which is probably best done with some software.

I don’t have any examples to show at the minute but quite simply we do this when a team hits a boundary the overreaction happens.  Don’t employ this right at the end of the game because teams could be going hell for leather. In the middle over’s teams will take a boundary in an over and the bowler will do his best to tighten it up.

This does require a little skill therefore I suggest you watch how the market moves after boundary’s are hit, dot bowls are bowled and even when the spinner bowls are deployed as they normally result in the slight slowing down of a game.

Hopefully this gives you some food for thought, good luck

Cheers , Simon