The Best Cricket Betting Sites in the UK

Cricket… one of the few sports that the US hasn’t quite yet adopted. Despite this, cricket betting is still on the rise. This is backed up by some of the best cricket betting sites in the UK consistently offering value to us punters.

Speaking of value; we’re throwing massive value out at you with this article, packed full of more information on the best bookies to go to for your cricket sports bets. We also feature specific cricket bets to look out for, top bonuses and promotions, and exactly where to go to place your bets.

Come and join us at the crease…

Top 7 Cricket Betting Sites

Not all bookies offer a cricket sportsbook, so we’ve created this shortlist of the top 7 cricket betting sites above.

The Best Cricket Betting Bonuses and Promotions

Most online bookies offer bonuses and promotions that cover a wide range of sports. Football, being the most popular betting sport in the UK, tends to attract more tailor-made offers, but cricket betting still has the advantage of being in the warm, welcoming arms of the bonuses and promos.

Cricket Betting – The Welcome Bonus

Most online bookies will offer a welcome bonus. This is an opportunity for you to join up with them and use their cricket betting book when you need to.

Often bookies will have a welcome offer that covers a multitude of sports, including cricket. However, some of the best cricket betting sites will have more than one on offer.

You’re only able to take up one offer, so if you have a choice, choose wisely. How do you know which one to take? The no deposit bonus is the ultimate welcome offer, with a free bet next, closely followed by a 100% matched deposit with a low wagering requirement.

No Deposit Bonus

Essentially, the bookie will provide you with a bonus simply for registering with their site. They do this with the assumption that you’ll go back to them to place your cricket bets. In terms of value, you’re not going to be getting a huge amount; likely £10 or £20. But it’s better than nothing!

Be aware of checking the terms and conditions for these. There might be a restriction across which sports the bonus can be redeemed. Some online bookies will only allow you to use a no deposit bonus in their casino section.

Cricket Free Bets

Cricket free bets are awesome; there’s no doubt about it. These are also known as a “bet and get” offer.

For example, a “Bet £10 and get £20″ is very common. It doesn’t matter whether it’s football betting or cricket betting, these are available for all sports. Once you’ve registered your details and claimed the bonus, you need to bet £10 of your own money.

Be sure to comply with the terms and conditions here. Your initial £10 might need to be placed on only specific cricket betting markets. For example, the “Match Odds” market is the most popular cricket market. Say England are playing Australia at The Oval… in the Match Odds market, you can bet on:

• England to win.
• The match to be a draw.
• Australia to win.

Upon your initial bet being settled, the bookie will credit your account with a free bet of £20.

This can usually be confirmed somewhere within your balance. It’s usual for the account to display a separate amount for your funds and the free account.

Once you can see the funds in your account, it’s time to place the free bet. Make sure to obey the terms and conditions again. Specifically, look out for any restrictions on the type of bets you can place the free bet on.

If your bet wins, and as long as you conform to the terms and conditions of the bet, the winnings should be added to your main account balance. The funds should then be immediately available for withdrawal. An exception to this is when the bonus requires a specific wagering requirement on the winnings.

Fortunately, such wagering requirements are rare for free bets. It’s more common for bookmakers to require you to place multitudes of £10 bets of your own money before the £20 free bet is granted. These might still be marketed as “Bet £10 and get £20″, so be sure to check the fine print.

Cricket Matched Deposit Bonus

The matched deposit bonus is the current trend in online sports bonuses and promotions. While not as lucrative as free bets, since the free bets tend to be worth more than your original stake, they still offer a positive value.

Be on the lookout for 100% matched deposits. Some bookmakers will offer more than one promotion, with one being 100% and another being 50%. There are no prizes for guessing that the 100% offers are much better. Even so, that doesn’t mean they don’t come with more strict terms to obey.

As an example, many offers will say, “100% matched deposit up to £100″. Note that the “up to” words are key here. The bookie will use a deposit bracket to marry up the matched deposit bonus to. For example, depositing between £10 and £29 might grant you a £10 bonus. £30–£49 a bonus of £30, £50–£69 a bonus of £50, etc. It makes sense to deposit the minimum in this bracket range.

If you’re not convinced, remember that you’re going to have to risk your initial money to be able to use or withdraw the bonus.

Cricket Betting Sites – Wagering Requirements

Wagering requirements are a common stipulation for bonuses and promotions, especially with matched deposit bonuses. It’s very common for you to have to wager through your deposit a certain amount of times before the bonus is applied. The lower this number is, it reduces the number of times you need to bet the funds.

Don’t be put off by this wagering amount, though. It’s not uncommon for the requirement to only be 1x.

Minimum Odds in Cricket

Aside from the wagering requirements, a minimum odds amount also tends to feature in the terms and conditions of cricket bonuses and promotions.

A common minimum bet odds requirement is odds of 1/2 (1.5). This is perhaps the easiest place to slip up since the majority of punters will find a dead-cert match, so that they protect their money. And, as we’ve seen in recent years with Ireland surprising the cricket world many times, there’s never a dead-cert.

Make sure you understand the small print.

Enhanced Cricket Odds

Although you’ll find enhanced odds more of a thing in football and horse racing, bookmakers do offer enhanced odds for the big cricket events. We’re talking The Ashes and the ICC World Cup here.

What this means is that bookies will boost the odds, giving you more of a return for a bet. That doesn’t always mean that you should jump on these bets; there’s usually a good reason why the bookie is trying to attract money to a specific team.

Cricket Betting at bet365

Bet365 pushes to the top league when it comes to depth of markets. For the recent Ashes series, it had 50 individual markets alone. Even a much less popular event such as the Tamil Nadu Premier League had as many as 10 markets for each match.

The bookie powerhouse is also a go-to site for in-play betting, in-play stats, and live streaming. We were pretty surprised to see that they have live streaming for a VOC Rotterdam cricket match. The Dutch aren’t that well-known for their cricketing process, although they are on the rise. However, bet365 clearly sees the value in offering such a service for a low-profile match.

Don’t fall out of your chair when your laptop suddenly makes a, “HOW IS EEE?” noise when there’s an appeal in the game. Simply brilliant! The in-play stats add to this, showing you the result of the last six balls, and a worm diagram that compares the runs scored by each team after each over passes.

In-play betting can add some spice to your cricket betting.

Is 888Sport a Good Site for Cricket Betting?

It most certainly is! 888Sport takes pride in the information in its blog. Bookies aren’t just about competing for the best odds with their competitors. Added value content such as blogs offers the punters extra information on who to back in the latest County Championship game, for example. It adds reasoning as to why the market’s price is what it is.

We’ve often found 888Sport to be highly competitive with its market pricing. When you combine this with a wide range of markets within a cricket match and its generous bonuses and promotions, 888 is right up there as one of the best cricket betting sites.

What’s the Difference Between Pre-Match and In-Play Cricket Betting?

Online cricket betting to a massive shift for the better when in-play betting became an option. Pre-match betting markets differ slightly to those that are in-play, with the odds moving much slower pre-match than their more-exciting sister market.

Pre-Match Cricket Betting

No brownie points for guessing what this means. Do note, though, that you can place pre-match bets up until the very first ball is delivered. It’s usually up to the bookie when this happens, and you might find that the markets close for pre-match bets when the umpires take the field.

The odds move slowly in pre-match cricket betting. Any large shifts are usually due to a weather change or a team announcement.

In-Play Cricket Betting

In-play betting is much faster and furious than pre-match. Since a game can swing in each team’s favour after just a single ball being bowled, the market prices react very quickly.

For example, an in-play market for the next over to have more than 10.5 runs could have a price below evens in a T20 game in the Indian Premier League. A wicket can instantly shift the odds out above evens, completely shaping the market differently.

It can really be action-packed. Bet365 especially has a market for every single ball bowled and how many runs will be scored from it. Others include odds for the next dismissal method, whether the runs for the next over will be odd or even, and how many runs will be scored by the end of the 10th over.

If you want to bet while a match is taking place, consider in-play betting.

What Are the Most Popular Cricket Bets?

As with any sport, some cricket betting markets are much more popular than others. Knowing which cricket bets are the most popular can help you direct your attention if you’re unsure of where to put your money.

Match Odds Market

Some might also refer to this market as “1X2″. “1″ is the home team. “X” is the draw. And “2″ is the away team. The home team is always listed first in this case.

There are only three possible outcomes here, and there’s nothing else to understand, making it an obvious first choice to place a bet. The prices of a draw pre-match don’t attract much attention since draws are increasingly becoming less common in cricket.

Runs in the Innings Market

There’ll be a market for each team here, which is where you can bet for how many runs each team will score for an inning. This entire market will be split into different run amounts, for example:

1. 100 runs or more.
2. 125 runs or more.
3. 150 runs or more.
4. 175 runs or more.
5. … and so on.

Some bookmakers will offer a price up to 700/1!

Over Totals Market

This allows you to put your money on how many runs one (or more) of the teams will score after a certain amount of overs. The most common options start after 20 overs and go up to after 100 overs.

Within each of these, you’ll be able to select:

1. 10 runs or more.
2. 20 runs or more.
3. 30 runs or more.
4. Etc.

The most popular cricket betting sites may offer a price up to 250 runs or more after 20 overs. The popularity of these markets will differ considerably between T20 and Test cricket, with higher over rates existing in the shorter and more elaborate T20 version.

Other Cricket Betting Markets

We’d miss the next Ashes test if we went into depth on each market. In short, here are some of the other markets:

• Who will win the toss.
• If the match will tie. Yes/No.
• Match odds draw no bet (if the match is drawn, you get your stake back).
• Top batsman (kind of like top goalscorer in football).

Do All Cricket Betting Sites Offer a Cash-Out Option?

Adding in a cash-out option doesn’t seem to have been adopted by all the major bookies. So, no, not all cricket betting sites offer this as a feature.

For those that do, it’s an excellent function no matter if you’re at home on your PC or laptop, or out and about and using an app or your phone’s browser.

Cashing out is usually available as soon as you’ve placed your bet. If you placed the bet in error, don’t cash out. Instead, get hold of customer services and ask for the bet to be voided. Some of the team here at My Betting Bonus have had success with this.

The biggest bonus for cashing out on your cricket bet lies in taking a slice of the profit when you feel comfortable. This has opened up the market to shift traditional betting towards the new age of sports trading.

For example, England are away to Australia in The Ashes. They were underdogs pre-game but are now racing ahead with some early wickets. You backed them pre-game, and now the bookmaker is offering you some profit if you cash out your bet now. This can work well if you believe Australia will bounce back, or if you’re more risk-averse and want to take some profit and run.

The Top 3 Cricket Betting Mobile Apps

Mobile betting is on the rise. It’s estimated that over 40% of people in the UK use a mobile phone to place bets. That’s massive considering how slow the big bookies have been to optimise themselves for apps.

It just makes sense that we don’t want to be confined to our PCs to get a bet on quickly; especially when you’re watching the game live and feel there’s value in having a punt. What if you’re at your local cricket club watching England in a T20 and want to stick £10 on the next over being over 20 runs?

Here’s our top 3 for you to try out:

1. William Hill
2. 888Sport
3. Unibet

Ease of Use

The apps developed by the above bookmakers reach our list primarily for their ease of use. When you log in to an app, you want it to be a fast process. For whatever reason, some of the top online bookmakers have slow-loading apps, which can be seen as a negative when deciding on a bookie to use.

Accessibility to Cricket Markets

Another feature, especially for cricket, is how swiftly you can access the market from the front screen. If a bookmaker values cricket in its betting portfolio, you’ll see it on the main menu without having to use an “other sports” sub-menu.

All Features are Present

We don’t feel that there should be any discrimination between desktop and mobile when it comes to betting. As such, the same markets available on a PC should be present on an app or by using the phone’s browser.

Simple Interface

It’s passable for a desktop site to be slightly more complicated and hold more information. Mobile screens are so limited in their display sizes that less is more. We still want all the information, just perhaps in a less-cluttered way.