Arbusers

What a wonderful weekend for the cricketing world is observed now!

After the Chattogram's limited-time exceptional bowling performance (except the Dead Overs), minutes ago top-notch bowling effort was performed by Tom Curran & Pathirana duo! That classy Dead Over bowling by them revived the Desert Vipers team at the end when at some stage Dubai Capitals needed only 30 runs from 24 balls...

I am wondering exactly how to improve the quick assessment of bowling effort in cases like these today. I mean live mode, aiming to predict better intervals of the dropping odds, naturally.

After another hidden value generously donated by the bookies (I mean the Otago Volts team hours ago), there are some extremely liquid markets to follow today:
- The Proteas vs England, ODI in SA;
- The Renegades vs Brisbane Heat, BBL play-offs;
and naturally the icing on the cake today is the second T20 in Lucknow, India against The Kiwis. Any chance of Prithvi Shaw being the opening batsman for the first time in about a year or two, or maybe Shubman Gill does the job?

Apart from Hardik Pandya's talent as a player, does anyone realize how difficult his case is as a BCCI-appointed captain? On the one hand, he is something of a backup captain when Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma are absent, on the other hand, he has to live up to expectations when the most talented and proven players are absent, and he has to build a team with many players who are not first choice and off the proven list of hard workers like Sharma, Kohli, Jadeja, Rayudu, Kumar, Bumrah, Rahul etc.
Keeping the above-mentioned things in mind, the setup for the market positions is slightly different but considering the managerial intelligence of Pandya to build a reasonably good team when some of the best players are absent.

SA vs ENG in Bloemfontein now.
If the Proteas get close to the 40th Over without the loss of an extra wicket and if the Klaasen and Markram are close to 120 SR, an additional injection of liquidity from our side makes sense in the markets. Right now, it seems to me that the odds range plateau (1.6 to 2.4) in South Africa's favor will be broken, starting with Markram's Six in 31.1 Over. Let's see what happens now.

Rashid and Woakes have worsened their ECON ratio, and Stone and maybe Topley are OK now. I wonder when the England captain will force Sam Curran into the bowling attack, and what will be the pitch situation at that point. Buttler due to Klaasen's dismissal actually returns the intrigue, but...

A very quick assessment of the Miller vs. Curran fight is needed right now. This will create some probability for a future corridor of odds.

2.4 - 1.6 - 1.4 - 1.6 ... 1.3 ...1.15 - 1.3 for SA lately. Let's calculate the probabilities of the second bowler along with Sam Curran achieving under 7 E/R. This is the condition for the revival of England. By the way, Moeen Ali is not in the optimal form today, with ECON above 7….

Rounding off this remarkable weekend of cricket, we saw further bowling performances of all kinds.

The cat-and-mouse game was played by India against New Zealand, but at the end of the chase, the nightmare was too close for the hosts!
BCCI, stop experimenting and seek stability!
During the game, some efforts by both the bowling departments reminded me of the best years of Sunrisers Hyderabad and Mumbai Indians when they had to defend a low achieved total...
After all, that game gradually turned into bowling dept dominance (Phillips, Chapman, Bracewell, Santner etc) vs the opposition bowling dept dominance (Singh, Chahal, Hooda, Yadav etc). The Stats matter here.

The price corridor between the selected floor and ceiling prices lasted an unusually long time, let's say almost the entire time of the chase.
Somewhere circa the 18th Ov of the chase, some selected trading lines were broken, and the Roller-coaster for the Indian team in the last moments of that clash (from a purely sporting point of view) turned into a pure price action strategy on the exchange markets.
What a sight at the end, from a sporting, Stats, and trading point of view!

When it comes to the Proteas vs the Three Lions clash today:
- Initially, England achieved probably one of the best batting totals on the pitch in Bloemfontein for ODI, as far as I know. From the initial slight favorite, the Three Lions became the heavy favorite. Note the exceptional batting performance from the 47th to 50th Over;
Overall, some selected trade entries/exits were strong in the first part.
- Poor management of the bowling effort for the current favorite and when South Africa hit 15 Ov for just 1Wkt, some hidden Stats marks alarmed me that SA tends to become the favorite actually if some additional conditions happen - a strong point for value positions on the markets;
- Some further entries into the markets (value positions) were suggested by the model when the odds for SA became around 2.4 or something before the beginning of Markram's attack in the 32nd Over;
- Mediocre further bowling management from the visiting team, only Sam Curran was in top-notch form and it wasn't enough for the Lions to beat the Proteas.
- Outstanding bowling effort by who? Curran, of course. During the final Overs, the battle between Curran and the batsman duo of David Miller and the underrated Marco Jansen was remarkable when it comes to class bowling in the Dead Overs stage. But too late from a sporting point of view.

Statistically, it was another rare case of a pregame favorite surpassing the record total for a given pitch and the underdog later winning. Each such case has specifics in the data and therefore requires post-analysis.

Does anyone who is keen on cricket think that the match of a few hours ago was probably among the best of Johnson Charles' career in the T20 format?

That is why I am going to post some thoughts on the current Champions of BPL 2022, the Comilla Victorians team in the BPL 2023 tournament.
At first glance, all published odds before every "Victorians" match in January 2023 had no visible value offered by the agencies.
Note that these cut pre-match odds were much less effective due to Narine's departure. Sunil himself practically won the title decider for the Victorians vs the Universe Boss' Fortune Barishal last year by just one run (via circa half-century as a batsman and circa 4 Economy Rate as a bowler, including the dismissals of the Universe Boss and Dwayne Bravo). Therefore, only the hidden value was possible to extract in the Comilla odds before the match, if it existed.

Some sporting observations and various statistics actually did the magic.
The first three games weren't good for the Champions (the first was actually a disaster), but I noticed that when Mohammad Rizwan and Johnson Charles were included in the starting line-up, helping Liton Das, the Comilla team became much better.

Rizwan was named in the starting XI in the third match vs the FB team and I had high expectations from Chadwick Walton as well, but that was my analytics error. After the defeat and some adjustments to the model, the impact of Rizwan's data was the same, but when the new starting line-up was released, Charles' influence was selected by the model along with Rizwan and additionally Das of course. So stability and some positive curves and sporting data were explored from now on.

Also, when in the match vs Sylhet Strikers the major inefficiencies of the bowling department were finally mitigated to a great extent, as a result, odds calculations and market positions were determined much more easily and somehow risk-mitigated.
And so on.

The big total of 210 runs put up by the Tigers a few hours ago is not seen every day. Calculating the probability of the Das-Rizwan-Charles triad beating this total in the chase wasn't an easy task. The rest is history.

Charles scored another memorable Century in the BPL a long time ago, ironically against Comilla in 2017, but remember he was playing alongside Chris Gayle and Brendon McCullum.

A few minutes ago, an incredible market error was spotted regarding the odds in the BPL2023 Dhaka vs Riders match.
I mean this: In the final Over of this match, Muktar Ali performed a bowling attack against Haris Rauf after 19.1 Overs. Ali has huge bowling leakage today, and Rauf kept his power at the usual level. Current and past analyzes have insisted on some XXX probability for Ali's bowling performance and YYY Rauf's quality for his batting performance. All statistics for these players are publicly available.
I can't believe that huge wrong odds are possible nowadays.
The dropping odds were predictable in an incredible range.
Sometimes the million-dollar markets aren't as strong as they seem. Thanks to all the odds makers today.

Time and time again, both hugely underrated Otago teams (Otago Volts and Otago Sparks) are epic examples of good in-play odds trading guidelines for independent cricket observers (based on many noticed bookies' misconstructions), and also very good pre-match odds - value positions, but in the long run.

The Sparks were outstanding minutes ago, an easy win against the Magicians at high mispriced pre-match odds.
Otago Volts vs the Kings now. After three Overs and two Wkts achieved, the Volts have designed some very pretty graphics on the screens for additional market positions, but the sports analysis gives some probabilities for this to happen early. Surprisingly, the third Wkt for Otago was not exactly determined by the model before the end of the Powerplay. That's why several early positions are closed now.
Canterbury after the Powerplay is behind but if they accelerate before the 15th Over, aiming to recover some of the lost ground through determined by the model S/R, additional entry positions are possible. Here I aim for the phase when the Canterbury Kings team becomes much more mispriced in terms of in-play odds. Another possible scenario is if Otago raised to 1.8 or above in-play before Dead Overs without the fifth Wkt falling., combined by several Wides for Kings. The Stats and the collected data and personal impressions helped to calculate in advance some interesting probabilities from those moments on if these conditions happen. Let's see what happens.

Now an interesting thing happened. Canterbury Kings have recovered from 3 to under 1.9 in the markets, but the aimed St/Ratio is far below desired. The four boundaries reached in the 14th and 15th Over are usually signals for market positions, but the model advises against doing so before the 18th Over, and for value positions only. The last condition was that the Fifth Wkt had just fallen. Clearly, despite the good market performance of the statistical model, further tuning is required especially for New Zealand T20 in the future.

For lovers of the range-bound market, a line break study of under 1.8 and over 2.1 for the Canterbury Kings last minutes generates further probabilities, but my advice is to wait and see Otago's initial tactical approach after the break time. Let's see.

I doubt the Otago Volts will employ the same tactics in their batting portion as in the last game against the Central Stags. Regardless of whether the required RR is much easier today as opposed to the required Run Rate against the Stags, I think the Volts' captain will take into account the fundamental difference between the bowling departments of the Central Stags and the Canterbury Kings.

The Big Bash League 2023, Perth Scorchers vs Brisbane Heat grand final is being played now.
All pre-match odds value was removed early by the agencies, so in-play odds movements could result in a profitable trade if the strong rationale is backing every entry/exit.

The Aussie statistical model set for the BBL 2023 is very different, but as well as digging into the current game, I'm doing some further comparisons with different model sets, e.g. New Zealand or India settings inputted inside the calculations. However, this does not bring any additional value at the current moment. So the current Australian model setup is the best one right now for BBL 2023.

A horse racing analogy - imagine the Royal Windsor Racecourse setting of the model applied to the Saratoga Race Course. 999 out of 1000 races will fail, but the rare diamond spark will light us up when track conditions are similar plus other circumstances.