Cricket Betting Sites & Offers
With all three different formats of the game now a roaring success, cricket has truly embraced a modern audience. As a consequence of this UK online bookmakers have more cricket markets, lines, coverage and crucially betting offers than ever before.
There are now more cricket matches, series and tournaments than ever and with the increasing popularity of the shorter game formats offers can now be found almost year round. Cricket really is a prefect sport for any punter with markets that can run anywhere from a couple of seconds (e.g number runs next ball) to 8 weeks or more (test series result).
Whether you want to punt on an international test series, a County Championship test match, 50 over limited one day internationals (ODIs) or the rapid and colourful Twenty20 there is a bookie and a deal out there. Here we show you all of the very best regular cricket promotions from UK licensed bookmakers.
Major Cricket Events
Free Bet, Bonus & Money Back Cricket Offers
Boylesports will payout early for all one day matches, 50 over ODIs, if the team you back makes a 100-0 opening partnership, i.e. the opening batsmen score 100 without losing a wicket.
18+. Online Only. Applies to bets placed on the cricket Early Payout market. Get paid out as a winner if your team makes a 100-0 Opening Partnership (1 Day Matches) in that match, even if they lose. T&Cs apply
Unless it is the ICC world cup or a big multi-match event it is difficult to use accumulator offers for cricket matches, as there are limited events to put into multiple bets. This therefore dramatically reduces the number of betting offers available when wagering on the sport.
The Ladbrokes Odds Boost feature however can be used on any single bet you like on any sport up to once a day, making it one of the best promotions available to add value to cricket bets.
Pick the bet you want to place and then boost the odds using the feature in the bet slip, this is available once each day for stakes up to £50, all winnings are cash with no cap. Considering Ladbrokes are also a bookie with one of the biggest market depths for Cricket it makes sense for regular bettors to get an account.
Betfred are the leading bookmaker for insurance deals for cricket. The most common deal in longer form cricket gives you your money back as a free bet if you back a top run scorer and they score 100+ runs but are not the overall top scorer. For shorter form games it is common to see if a team scores over a certain run total but doesn't win you also get your money back as a free bet.
There is no exact set formula and Betfred to vary their cricket offers, especially for formats like T20 and The Hundred. Certainly one to always look at before placing cricket bets though on the basis they are very strong for cricket insurance offers.
Best Cricket Bookmakers & Betting Sites
Betfred
Betfred have been in the bookmaking game a long time and they have a fair idea what their punters want. No messing about from this site, top offers and good markets.
Coral
If depth is what you want then look no further than Coral. I have yet to find another site with more pre-event and in play markets for cricket than these guys.
Ladbrokes
Good option for outright betting with some phenomenal pre-event and live event price enhancements. Worth having an account with just to check if you bet regularly on cricket.
Unibet
A big sponsor of cricket, especially at a county level, this massive European bookie has far more under its bonnet than you may imagine with markets for even the smallest events.
10bet
Reliable, especially if you like to bet on accumulators. 10Bet always have an acca offer open to cricket markets and so if you place combination bets this is a superior option.Cricket, How to Play, Rules, About, Origins and History
On these pages we’ve explored several different sports that have a history that’s closely tied in with the past of the British Empire. From football and the manner in which it came out of a dispute over the rules of rugby, through to snooker and the manner in which it was invented by an army officer who was bored when on a posting in India, there’s a fascinated story behind the origins of pretty much any competitive endeavour. That’s never been more true than when discussing cricket, a game that seems to be the very definition of Britishness. There’s no reason why we’re looking at sports with ties to England and the rest of the British Empire, of course. We’re also looking at the likes of American Football and ice hockey.
Yet the simple fact is that when it comes to cricket it’s impossible not to mention the manner in which it’s seen by many to be epitome of what it is to be English. There’s even a phrase for someone behaving somewhat scandalously, in which a party would inform them that what they’ve done is ‘just not cricket’. It is a sport that is suggestive of sunny days spent lounging on some grass and watching people dressed in white running back and forth before breaking for ‘drinks’ or ‘tea’. It is the greatest example of a sport that’s likely to be played in a quiet English village that it’s possible to find. Yet it’s also one of the most fiercely competitive, watched and argued over sports that you’re likely to come across. Here we’ll try to explain those contradictions as best we can.
A Potted History Of Cricket
As is so often the case with the most interesting sporting events out there, the exact history of cricket isn’t known. It’s important when talking about its origins, therefore, to distinguish between when we know that cricket began to be played and what we think of as being the sport’s early years. In south-east England, between the counties of Kent and Sussex, there is a section of wooded land that’s known as the Weald. Many cricket historians believe that the game has its origins in this part of the world, having been played by children there during the Norman or Saxon times. Some believe that it dates back even early than that, with claims having been made that references to Edward II having played ‘creag and other games’ on the 10th of March 1300 were an early attempt of spelling ‘cricket’. That does’t seem overly likely, however it is likely that the game began life as one being played by children before adults began to get involved.
The first time the sport earned any sort of real, identifiable reference was in the documents of a court case that took place in 1598. The course case involved a dispute over some land, with a fifty-nine year old man named John Derrick testifying that he and his school friends had played a game he called ‘creckett’ on the land fifty years before. There were no references to adults playing the game until more than a decade later, with two men being prosecuted in 1611 when they chose to play cricket on a Sunday instead of heading along to church. A dictionary definition in the same year added more fuel to the fire that it was seen as a kid’s game back then, referring to it as a ‘boy’s game’. The development of the game’s name from creckett to cricket isn’t particularly well-known either, although similar worlds in Old English, such as cricc, and French, like criquet, all mean something like ‘staff’ or ‘post’.
As with the majority of sports, cricket really took off once people realise how good an event it was to gamble on. In fact, it’s possible that the Gaming Act of 1664 was introduced specifically in an attempt to curb the gambling habits of those that enjoyed watching cricket. Just as the enjoyment of people gambling on the sport increased, so did its press coverage. In 1696 the press was granted freedom of coverage, meaning that they could finally write about the sport in newspapers and ordinary people began to take more interest in it. Though the general rules of cricket have been in existence as long as some form of the game has, they were eventually officially codified in 1744 and amended thirty years later. When the Marylebone Cricket Club was founded in 1787 at Lord’s Cricket Ground, the organisation took on custodianship of the rules and laws of the game and have made periodical adjustments ever since.
Interest in the game of cricket has waxed and waned with every passing year. That one of the first ever football matches took place on a cricket field tells you everything you need to know about the sport’s popularity at the time. Yet despite new and more interesting games being invented and played over the years, cricket has never even come close to disappearing off the map altogether. Those in charge of developing the game have worked hard to ensure that it has constantly re-invented itself. The most obviously example of this is the introduction of One Day Test Matches and Twenty20 Cricket. It has also been a sport that has been used to take a stand against social injustice. Though you wouldn’t think of cricket as being a political tool, it has been at times. In 1970, for example, the International Cricket Conference voted to ban South Africa from international competition until the end of aphartheid, which didn’t come about until 1991.
How Cricket Is Played
Though there have been a number of different versions of cricket introduced over the years, they all take their basis from the same origins. For that reason, we’ll look at the main game and then offer explanations of how the other varieties are played once we’ve covered the main one. Cricket is played between two teams made up of eleven players on each, often with a twelfth man kept in reserve in case of injury or illness. The toss of a coin decides which team will bat first and which will field first. The fielding side takes their entire team onto the cricket pitch and the captain will situate people around the field. One of the fielders goes behind the wickets and is known as the ‘wicket-keeper’, whilst another will take the responsibility of aiming the ball at the wickets and they’re called the bowler.
The rest of the team are fielders, placed in position in the hopes that they’ll be able to catch the ball when it’s hit by the batsman or, at the very least, stop the ball from traveling to the boundary. We mentioned the ‘wicket’ a second ago and that’s the thing that the entire game revolves around. There are three pieces of wood that are called stumps. These are put into the ground and the wicket itself goes on top of them. The bowlers have the aim of hitting the stumps in order to knock the wicket onto the ground, whilst the batsmen do their best to stop it from being knocked to the floor. The bowler will have six attempts at hitting the wickets, after which they will change ends to the opposite side of the pitch, with those six balls being collectively known as an ‘Over’. Each match contains a given number of Overs that tend to be split over a certain number of Innings – usually two.
An Innings can be over earlier than expected if the bowling team manages to get ten of the batters out, either by hitting the stumps and knocking the wicket to the floor or by catching the ball straight off the hit form the bat and before it touches the floor. There are also other methods, such as Leg Before Wicket and being run-out that can lead to a batsman’s dismissal. Whilst the bowlers are trying to get the batsmen out, the batters are trying to score points. Every time they hit the ball they’re entitled to run from one end of the pitch to the other, which is a single. They can run back and fourth as many times as they want during the period of time it takes the bowlers to get the ball in a position that will make the batsman stay in their ‘crease’ in order to protect the wicket. If they hit the ball along the ground and it touches the boundary rope, that counts as four runs. If they hit it and it goes over the boundary without touching the floor then that is an automatic six points.
Major Cricket Formats
One of the things that some people love about cricket is that a match can go on for up to five days. Teams can keep batting until the Overs are completed, or they can ‘declare’ and see if they can get the opposition team Out when they become the batters. Yet technically test cricket can last for up to five days. As a result, faster and more interesting variations of the game were invented over the years to stop matches from becoming too boring. The most interesting version of these is Twenty20 cricket, which involves one Innings per team and allows for a maximum of twenty overs in each Innings.
The one person on the field that we haven’t yet mentioned but who is arguably the most important is the Umpire. It’s their responsibly to decide whether a batsman is Out or not, often having to dismiss the appeals of the bowling team if he feels the batsman played fairly. Obviously this is just a condensed version of the rules, but hopefully it gives you a solid idea of how the game is played.
Major Cricket Competitions and Tournaments
Cricket remains an immensely popular sport, played all over the world. As England moved all throughout the commonwealth during Britain’s most illustrious years, so too did cricket. As a result, there are prestigious tournaments that take place on a regular basis, to say nothing of Test Matches that move from one part of the world to another. Here’s a look at some of the most interesting competitions in the sport.
The Ashes – There’s little question that The Ashes is one of the most watched and loved cricket tournaments in the sport. In its most simple format it is just a Test series played between England and Australia, with five Test matches per series. The location of the tournament moves between Australia and the UK roughly every year-and-a-half in order to coincide with summer, with the winners being the team that has ‘won the ashes’. The name comes from an article in 1882 in The Sporting Times, in which the writer said that ‘English cricket had died and the ashes taken back to Australia’ when the Aussies won the Test. The English captain vowed to travel to Australia and ‘regain those ashes’, with the title having stuck ever since.
The ICC Cricket World Cup – Taking place every four years, fans of football will have a fair idea of what this tournament involves. It is thought of as the number one event in cricket, on account of the fact that it is open to more than just the two teams. There are four stages to the tournament, which involves the playing of one day internationals between all members of the International Cricket Council who have qualified to play in the tournament. It was first played in 1975, though inter-nations cricket has been played since as long ago as 1912.
The T20 World cup – The name of this tournament tells you everything that you need to know. It is a version of the World Cup that is played in a Twenty20 format, generally taking place every two years. That’s not set in stone however, given that there was a four year gap between the 2016 edition and the following one in 2020. It has only been in existence since 2007, meaning that it lacks the prestige of older and more popular tournaments. Once again it is organised by the International Cricket Council, featuring twelve of the ICC’s full members and four that come in through qualification.
Indian Premier League – The most watched sports tournament in India by some distance is this Twenty20 tournament that takes place in India between April and May every year. To give you some idea of just how popular it is, the attendance of the Indian Premier League is ranked sixth in a list of any league sports event in the world. That’s a remarkable achievement for something that only came into existence in 2008 when the Board of Control for Cricket in India founded the event. It is played between teams representing Indian cities and states and often features a combination of lower league Indian cricketers and world-famous internationals.
Cricket Facts & Figures
| Competition | Most Successful Team |
|---|---|
| The Ashes | Australia |
| The ICC Cricket World Cup | Australia |
| The T20 World cup | The West Indies |
| Indian Premier League | Mumbai Indians |
There is actually a strong women’s game in cricket, with a Women’s Cricket World Cup having being held a full two years before the men’s game got its act together. Yet, as you can probably tell, in terms of the major tournaments it is still those played by the men that maintain the most interest. Here’s a look at the most common winners to date of each of the tournaments mentioned above:
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