Ground history - Basic profiling

I've discussed my cricket match betting preparation and the benefits of stats before but have received an email asking for more detail about what stats I collect, how I use them and what I mean by ground profiling.

I thought it would make an interesting blog post so will answer below. It's great to get both questions and feedback by the way so please do feel free to email, leave comments at the bottom of posts and say hi on Twitter.

Previously I've mentioned I keep my own database and focus on stats that will give me edges to beat markets rather than stats that are of more general interest to a cricket enthusiast.

I use these stats to draw up ground profiles - in which I try to identify key features and characteristics of matches at the venue I am preparing to bet on.

The stats I keep can generally be broken into two categories. There is an over lap but essentially they are those that profile a ground to help with:

1) Ante-post side market bets such as Total 6s, Multi 4s and Total boundaries.
2) In-running judgements on how teams are doing and what the result might be.

Today I'll look at the ante-post stats and how I use them. On which my starting point is always this table:

Cricket WASP

There's been a lot of talk on television, twitter and cricket betting forums about the cricket prediction tool WASP recently so I thought I'd give some thoughts on the subject.

I've read far more about WASP than is probably good for me and will start by saying the guys who've developed it are smart, know way more about stats than I ever will, and have made a useful, if stepping stone, contribution to the modelling of cricket. I doff my cap at their work.

I'll also say from the outset though that I more or less ignore it and would expect any competent cricket trader to profit handsomely if allowed to bet against its predictions.

I don't use the tool as the basis for any bets and will go as far as saying I wouldn't use WASP to place bets with your money, let alone mine - unless I was self-matching your bets!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. And being more than a little unfair. Let's take a proper look at WASP.

Cricket stats - The benefits

I've already discussed in general terms why I use cricket stats when it comes to betting on cricket. Now it's time to look at a specific example and see how stats can make us money.

Below is something I suspect very few people would have ever seen. Though is no doubt something their intuition would have led them to believe.

It is a graph showing the average number of runs scored in each over of completed T20 first innings. All Twenty20 matches and grounds in my database are included in the filters.