The Ashes Odds – Warm Ups Provide Guide?
November 14, 2006 1:02 am CricketWhen a big sporting match-up comes around, punters tend to look at warm up matches as a guide to where each team sits in terms of their form. England have just started their warm up matches and are finding the going tough, although they finally showed some middle order resistance at the SCG yesterday.
Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff showed that the Poms can actually bat against best of Aussie attack, so what does this mean for the 1st test in Brisbane next week?
The Aussies are currently 1.50 to win the first test. This quote has hardly moved this past week with England starting their tour off in horrible fashion. It seems the bookmakers are happy to risk Australia, even if just a little. Why? The fact is that England CAN cause a massive upset over the summer.
Sure, bookmakers have Australia at 1.25 to win the the series, but they know better that stranger things have happened. One only needs to look back a couple of years to the last ashes series to see the underdog Poms get up in emphatic fashion – and things aren’t that much different this time – except for Australia’s aging old men that the country expects will carry them across the line again.
But let’s not get too carried away! Australia SHOULD win this series and they SHOULD win the 1st test in Brisbane. But it really is nice to dream of a close series and one that might live up to the rivalry of years past.
Realistically, the results of warm up matches have very little impact on the ashes odds. The first test sees Australia at 1.50, the draw at 3.90 and an England win at 7.50 (Full odds here). Some long range forecasters are expecting the weather to play a small part in the result, but Australia is accustomed to finishing teams off within 4 days lately, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
What will affect the odds will be the loss of a critical player. Apart from that, don’t expect much movement between now and the first ball bowled on November 23.
Full odds and more betting options available at Licensed Australian Bookmaker IASbet.
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