Study · Cricket · 2023 to 2026 · 424 matches
One-day favourites
slip up.
Favourites in 250 one-day internationals were expected to win about 163. They won 147.
424 matches with closing prices from 3 or more bookmakers, 9 January 2023 to 27 October 2026 · Published 30 October 2026 ·
Free to quote under CC BY 4.0 ·
Download the data (CSV)
Format
by format.
| Format | Matches | Favourites priced | Favourites won | Toss winner won |
|---|
| One-day internationals (ODI) | 250 | 65.0% | 58.8% | 54.0% |
| T20 internationals | 22 | 74.1% | 86.4% | 45.5% |
| Caribbean Premier League (T20) | 94 | 58.9% | 66.0% | 59.6% |
| The Hundred (men) | 34 | 55.9% | 70.6% | 58.8% |
| The Hundred (women) | 24 | 58.7% | 70.8% | 66.7% |
| All | 424 | 63.0% | 63.4% | 55.9% |
The one-day matches (250 men's, 0 women's) are the biggest group, and there favourites came in 6.2 points under their price. Resampled 4,000 times, that gap lands between -12.2 and -0.4 points. The four T20 groups together (174 matches) went the other way: favourites won 70.1% against 60.2% (range 3.2 to 16.6 points).
T20 internationals cover September and October 2026 only; The Hundred covers 2025 (men) and 2026. Each T20 group is small on its own.
Favourites
by price.
| Favourite's price | Matches | Priced to win | Won | Lost |
|---|
| 50-60% | 199 | 55.7% | 56.3% | 87 |
| 60-70% | 144 | 64.5% | 66.0% | 49 |
| 70-80% | 53 | 75.3% | 67.9% | 17 |
| 80-90% | 25 | 84.0% | 92.0% | 2 |
| 90% and up | 3 | 93.4% | 100.0% | 0 |
| All favourites | 424 | 63.0% | 63.4% | 155 |
Across every format the price was right on average (63.0% priced, 63.4% won). No team priced at 85% or more lost in these 424 matches (12 such matches).
The
toss.
The team that won the toss went on to win 237 of 424 matches, or 55.9%. If the toss did not matter we would expect 50%. Resampled 4,000 times, the toss winners' win rate lands between 51.2% and 60.6%, so the toss does seem to help a little. Closing prices are usually set after the toss, so this is not a betting angle on its own.
Is it
real?
Cricket is our smallest study, so treat it as a first look. The one-day gap is the strongest finding and still not certain. Overall, the closing odds were right on average: favourites +0.4 points (95% range -4.1 to 4.8).
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How we
measured.
The method
We took the closing match-winner price for cricket matches from 9 January 2023 to 27 October 2026 that had prices from at least three bookmakers (about 8 on average). Each bookmaker's two prices were turned into chances, then scaled so the two teams add up to 100%, which removes the bookmaker's cut (on average 5.35%). We averaged the bookmakers for each match and matched it to the official result. Matches with no result, ties and super overs are left out; rain-shortened results (DLS) are kept.
On the Brier score (the average squared error of a chance; a coin flip scores 0.250), the closing prices scored 0.2262, in line with the 0.2245 they expected of themselves.
The data file
cricket-favourites-2023-2026.csv has one row per game. Columns: date, format, gender, team1, team2, team1_chance (margin-free closing chance for team1), books, team1_won, favourite, fav_chance, fav_won, toss_winner, toss_winner_won.
Free to use, share and adapt under CC BY 4.0. Please credit “Bet Better (betbetter.world)” and link to this page.
Cite this study
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