Average score is not par score

I've discussed cricket stats and betting in general a few times now. I'll get round to giving proper examples of the benefits and dangers of using them in due course but first a small but annoying example of the danger of bad stats.

I wasn't going to write about this for a while but one commentator's absurd assertion during Wednesday night's Glamorgan v Hampshire Twenty 20 match that "160 is always a par score" reignited my irritation on the issue.

So it's a bit of a gripe this one but it's good to get things off your chest - and there's also an important warning here for anyone new to cricket betting.

The issue is relevant to both innings runs and match odds markets and is seemingly cropping up ever more frequently in live televised cricket.

Even Sky Sports' pundits, usually vastly better than cricket board produced cheerleader commentaries where endless excuses for poor play suggest it must be a sackable offence to actually criticise a player, make this error.

WASP as a possible betting tool

Recently I published a detailed article about the cricket WASP giving my thoughts on the tool, how it works, and why I thought it was largely useless from a betting perspective.

Of course, it was never intended to be a betting tool, and I was delighted that WASP co-creator Dr Seamus Hogan saw fit to comment on the piece, clarify some issues - and agree he would not use it to bet either! Please do add your own thoughts to the discussion at the bottom of that piece.

While writing that article I did mention that, despite my overall reservations about WASP, there were certain limited circumstances in which I thought cricket traders could benefit from its outputs.

In this post I'll outline these circumstances, explain how I believe WASP can be used profitably, and illustrate how you can easily do this yourself.