Though you rarely ever see them mentioned in the same sentence, classic casino games have a few important commonalities with the game of cricket. This might seem odd at first, and understandably so, but once you learn about what they have in common, you may have a hard time trying to unsee the similarities and connections.
Both are Deeply Involved in Betting
As big fans of cricket are already well aware, the sport has had a big betting culture for quite some time now. Cricket fans have been engaging in wagers of all sorts long before online casinos hit everyone’s smartphones and tablet devices. Every Indian online casino, including the highlighted ones found on AskGambler’s list, has wager types that cricket gamblers will find very familiar.
While not all fans of cricket are bettors, it’s hard to deny that this sport does seem to have a disproportionate number of betting fans compared to other sports, like football, basketball, or tennis. And on the flip side, the number of cricket bettors out there probably doesn’t match the number of fans of blackjack, roulette, poker, or slots who engage in gambling themselves.
Still, when people think of non-casino games that are involved in betting, cricket is one of the first examples people tend to bring up, alongside horseback racing.
The Fanbases and Userbases Overlap
For years now, there has been a deep overlap between people who enjoy casino games—particularly dice, card, and table games—and those who enjoy cricket. The odds are very good that a cricket fan enjoys some form of casino gambling, and vice versa.
There are many reasons to explain this, some recent and some much older. For one thing, sports betting sites are more likely to have cricket than other sports in certain parts of the world. This means that gambling sites have exposed fans of casino games to cricket, giving them an easy opportunity to engage in the sport in a more direct way.
Many sports fans enjoy placing bets on matches, but this can double for cricket fans. Even though football and basketball have millions of people who will place bets on their matches, many of them will only participate in the major championship games, such as the Super Bowl.
But with cricket fans, there is a longer history of integration between the sport and the betting culture that goes back generations. Cricket fans are simply exposed to gambling opportunities a lot more often than the average soccer or golf fan. As a result, many cricket fans enjoy placing bets, which ends up becoming a great gateway into poker betting or any other common casino game.
The history is so deep that Netflix even made a documentary about India’s cricket scene and a major match-fixing scandal. When a sport makes so much money off bets that people try to rig the match, that’s a good sign that said sport is deeply entrenched in gambling culture.
Cricket and Gambling Share Similar Skillsets
The tricks and skills necessary to be good at betting on cricket are definitely not the same skills necessary to play the game itself, but they are skills, nonetheless. These skills have a lot in common with the skills necessary to place bets in poker matches, baccarat, and the like.
One such example is analytical skills, especially ones that allow you to investigate the trends of teams or habits of certain players and then extrapolate the most logical predictions based on this data. Poker players act very similarly when analyzing opponents and trying to detect habits, be it bluffs when they fold, or when they act cocky and confident.
Observation skills are also very important in both domains. Cricket fans and bettors have to pay close attention to the habits and strategies of players to see if they can predict their literal next moves on the field. Much like in poker, you have to observe your opponents very often and see if they react to any developments in the game to spot any signs of weakness.
Can Experience With Casino Betting Make You Better at Cricket Betting?
If casino games like Texas Hold’em, slot machines, baccarat, roulette, and craps have commonalities with cricket, does this mean that you can transfer betting skills from one area to the other?
The short answer is yes. Because betting on cricket matches has a lot in common with betting on certain casino games, the odds are pretty good that if you get good at one, you are probably unconsciously improving your skills in the other.
There are, of course, limits to how far you can take this logic. Many slot games that are popular are very chance-based, so there are only so many skills that even professional gamblers can apply here.
But thankfully, some games are more skill-based than others. Poker, blackjack, and craps are usually the games people go to when they want to have more control over the outcome, either through mathematical manipulation or cunning and strategy. These are also the types of casino games that cricket fans and gamblers are more likely to gravitate to.
When betting on cricket matches, you can place wagers in categories pertaining to coin tosses, most sixes, and over under. These types of bets will feel familiar to people with experience playing games like blackjack, roulette, and craps. Being heavy on analyzing numbers, the practice you made in one game will carry over to another.
Cricket, being a sport, still has a lot more in common with traditional sports betting, be it soccer or football. This is why you should look at the bet types that online casinos and sportsbooks will make available—most of them will be prop bets, top batsman bets, innings runs, and so on.
Still, there is no denying that classic casino games, especially blackjack and poker, have a lot more in common with cricket than many people realize to this day.
