Cricket Betting At Bodog Sportsbook

What would the world of sports be without tradition? Most of the games we bet on today have been around for at least a century or two, long enough to establish themselves as important parts of our culture. Cricket has a leg up on nearly all of them; this sport is well over 400 years old now, and rates second only to soccer in global popularity.

Cricket betting is nearly as old as the sport itself. Bodog Sportsbook wasn’t around back then, but we’re here today – and online cricket betting has never been easier or more fun. Our latest guide will explain the history of this genteel sport, the teams and players that rule the oval, and how you can bet on all of the action right here at Bodog.

A Brief History of Cricket

Cricket was probably invented as a children’s game in medieval southeast England; the earliest written reference dates back to 1597, and the first known cricket matches for adults were held sometime around 1611. Organized cricket was rare back then, and played mostly by rival parishes or villages.

Then the rich people got involved. Drawn in partly by the opportunity for sports betting, landowners and other English “gentry” started following, promoting and even playing cricket themselves. Having a good patch of land was important. In the early days of cricket, the ball was delivered by rolling it towards the batter, so the grass had to be kept neat and trim.

As the British Empire grew, colonists spread the sport of cricket far and wide. It’s still intensely popular today in most warm-weather Commonwealth countries, but the center of the cricket universe remains in London, where the Marleyborne Cricket Club continues to oversee the Laws of Cricket, as they have since 1788.

These laws have changed over time, and so has the structure of cricket itself. Test cricket is still the preferred game for top-flight international play, with matches taking up to five days to complete, but shorter formats like One Day International (ODI, established in 1971) and Twenty-20 (T20, established in 2003) have become very popular for both international and league-based competition.

Top Cricket Teams and Famous Players

When you think about cricket, you probably think about Test cricket, with the players all dressed in white. There are 106 member nations in the International Cricket Council (ICC), but only 12 have achieved the status that allows them to play Test matches. England and Australia were first to play in 1877; they began the series known as The Ashes in 1882, and it remains arguably the most important series in cricket today.

The number of Test countries kept growing over the years, but it wasn’t until India joined in 1932 that cricket really started to take off. Following the partition of India, Pakistan joined in 1952; the rivalry between the two has understandably become the most heated in just about any sport.

Other countries and regions have excelled at cricket, including the West Indies, but the aforementioned four countries have dominated the sport for quite some time. They’ve produced most of the world’s greatest players, from India’s Sachin Tendulkar (who played from 1989-2013) to Australia’s Don Bradman (1928-1948).

As for league-based cricket, the Indian Premier League (IPL) is widely considered to be the best, followed by the Big Bash League (BBL) in Australia, the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), and the Pakistan Super League (PSL) – although some would rate the PSL third ahead of the CPL.

Among these leagues, the IPL is king. Teams like the Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians regularly draw over 100 million television viewers every season. It’s a must-see matchup whenever these teams meet, with the cricket betting reaching a fever pitch. 

How to Bet on Cricket

If you’ve never bet on cricket or you never tried online cricket betting at Bodog Sportsbook, here you have some cricket betting tips. Test matches allow you to bet on either side winning, or with the match ending in a draw. For ODI and T20 matches, you’ll be betting on one of the teams to win. Here’s a recent example from T20:

West Indies –285

Bangladesh +210

When it comes to cricket betting in Canada, Bodog uses the American odds format by default, but you can switch to decimal odds or fractional odds at your discretion. In this match, the favoured Windies will pay out $100 for every $285 wagered (smaller and larger bets are allowed), while underdog Bangladesh will pay out $210 for every $100 wagered.

In addition to the matches themselves, you can bet on cricket props (short for “proposition bets”), like the Total Fours bet, which asks whether there will be Over or Under a certain number of “fours” scored by the two teams combined. Visit Bodog’s cricket odds board to see which matches are on the betting calendar, and which props are available for each match. 

Cricket Betting FAQ

Q: What happens to my bet if the match gets cancelled?

A: Cricket matches sometimes get abandoned because of bad weather or other circumstances. If your match gets cancelled, your bet is voided and returned to you unless the match is replayed or re-started within 36 hours.

Q: What’s the difference between a tie and a draw?

A: A cricket match ends in a tie when the two teams have the exact same score after all innings have been completed. A draw only happens in Test cricket; this is when one or both teams can’t complete their innings because they’ve run out of overs, or they’ve run out of time.

Q: What happens to my match bet when there’s a tie?

A: If betting on the tie wasn’t included among your betting options, a tie is treated like a dead-heat. Bets on either team are graded as pushes; bets on the draw (where available) are graded as losses. That’s assuming the tie in question isn’t resolved by a bowl-off, super over or some other tiebreaker, in which case the final result will stand.

You can learn more about the ins and outs of cricket betting by consulting our complete FAQ and Help guides at Bodog Sportsbook, but for now, you’ve got all the basics you need to get started. Enjoy the matches, and enjoy betting on cricket at Bodog.