The Road to Riches Weekend of 16-17th September

Coming up this weekend

• Horse Racing, On the flat at Bath, Chester, Doncaster, Lingfield and Musselburgh.
• Football, the Premier League returns including West Ham United v Manchester City.
• Rugby Union, the Rugby World Cup continues.
• NFL, the new season continues, week 2.
• Formula One, the Singapore Grand Prix
• Cricket, the Metro Bank One Day Cup final, Leicestershire v Hampshire.
• Tennis ATP Opens in Zhuhai and Chengdu and the Rogers Cup.
• Golf the French Open on the DP World Tour

The Cricket World Cup

The 2023 Cricket World Cup is to be held in India starting on 5^th October and running until 19^th November. We’ll have full coverage of the tournament including the outright and props markets ante-post and each match through to the final. The cost of the package is £50 and you can sign up here

Free Tip

Cricket Metro Bank One Day Cup Final Leicestershire v Hampshire at Trent Bridge, Saturday 11am

A victim of the crowded domestic cricket schedule this 50 over competition has taken back seat in terms of profile for the last three years running concurrently with the Hundred during August. Every county side lost players to the new franchises, though sides were affected to different degrees. For example Hampshire reached the knockout stages and then onto the final having lost 10 players to the 100. They are all now available for the final and understandably enough they are odds-on favourites for the final.

In contrast Leicestershire, one of the smaller counties, lost only three players to the shorter competition. One of those, spinner Rehan Ahmed is still away, this time with England for their ODI series against Ireland next week. In addition Australian wicketkeeper-batsman Peter Handscomb is absent, back home preparing for the domestic season.

With Leicestershire essentially playing a first XI through he pool stages against opponents playing a few first team players but mostly Second XI and fringe players they won 7 out of 8 pool games and then best Gloucestershire (another side hardly affected by the Hundred) in the semi-finals.

Hampshire’s achievement in also winning 7 out of 8 pool matches was arguably more admirable, they then beat Warwickshire in the semi-final with returning from the Hundred Liam Dawson taking 7 for 15.

Now Leicestershire’s squad advantage from earlier in this competition has disappeared but they have two things in their favour.

Firstly, change has been afoot. They’ve won no trophy for 38 years and earlier this summer after just two wins from 14 matches in the T20 Blast head coach Paul Nixon departed in unexplained but plainly acrimonious circumstances. Since then the club has blooded younger players. Progress has been seen in the County Championship where the side sits third in division two and with an outside chance of promotion as we reach the final matches of the season. In the One Day Cup they’ve compiled some big scores. I watched them chase down 325 to beat Surrey with 46 balls to spare at The Oval and they compiled 298 to beat this weekend’s opponents Hampshire at Southampton.

In the bowling ranks Chris Wright (16 wickets) and South African All-rounder Wiaan Mulder (12 wickets) have been mainstays but there have been eye-catching contributions from younger players such as Tom Scriven (14 wickets) and Josh Hull an 18 year old left arm quick with 15 wickets. Definitely one for the notebook, a tall and fast bowler for the future.

Secondly the weather forecast for this weekend in Nottingham is decidedly mixed with some rain forecast. If the match is affected and Duckworth-Lewis were come into play this becomes much more of a “toss game” than it would be in good conditions, as the formula very much favours sides batting second. Either of these sides would be favourites winning the toss in that scenario.

In these circumstances, I am going to take the underdog.

12 points Leicestershire to win the One Day Cup Final at 6/5 Bet365, William Hill and BetVictor

Tank

As the Arizona Cardinals tank without admitting that they’re tanking they have another way to position themselves for the next stage of their rebuild from 2024 onwards.

They have a legitimate business reason for keeping their best player off the field for the entirety of the new season. Franchise Quarterback Kyler Murray is currently on the “Physically Unable to Perform” list and will miss the first four games of the season at minimum after tearing his ACL in Week 14 of last year. He has millions in injury guarantees that become fully guaranteed this year and next. If a player can’t pass a physical on the date the guarantees convert, the team cannot avoid the financial commitment.

The Cardinals are under the new guidance of head coach and general manager and have already demonstrated they're not afraid to cut ties if needed, as players such as DeAndre Hopkins and Isaiah Simmons a first round draft pick two years ago are off the roster. If the Cardinals are contemplating a future without the first pick in the 2019 draft, it makes good business sense to keep him on the PUP list not just for the first four weeks but for the entire 2023 season. The current contract pays him $56m but rises to $92m if he plays again and is re-injured.

In those circumstances there has to be a doubt that Murray will on the field this year and whether  the Cardinals would fully guarantee a contract for a player that might not be in their plans moving forward. Keeping Murray on the PUP list also has the important added benefit of keeping new nack up Josh Dobbs at quarterback, increasing the chances that the Cardinals fall to the bottom of the standings and rise to the top of the 2024 draft order. The 2024 draft has several top Quarterback prospects, notably Heisman trophy winner USC’s Caleb Williams and a brilliant young wide receiver, Marvin Harrison Jnr.

Finally, another team might trade for Murray at the end of the year. NFL teams can be desperate for a quarterback, there simply aren’t enough of sufficient quality for all 32 and the trade compensation back to the Cardinals might be better if he’s traded on a lower value contract.

 

StattoBets Dave Monthly Subscription - Soccer - Tennis - Darts

Stattobets write ups, analysis and bets are available to monthly subscribers.

Results = points bet 34780 profit +1506.90 ROI +4.33% Full details here

Monthly subs are £50 a month and can be cancelled at any time. You can sign up here. 

Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated on 1^st July 2023. They can be found by clicking RESULTS

If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £67,126 All bets have an ROI +3.05%

A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £71,176 a 1678% increase 

 

 

The Road to Riches Weekend of 9th-10th September

Coming up this weekend

 

• Horse Racing, On the flat at Ascot, Haydock, Kempton and Thirsk on the all-weather at Wolverhampton and over the jumps at Stratford.
• Football, European Championship Qualifying including Ukraine v England.
• Rugby Union, the Rugby World Cup starts.
• NFL, the new season starts.
• Cricket, the Second ODI between England and New Zealand in Southampton.
• Tennis the Davis Cup Finals.
• Golf the Fortinet Championship on the USPGA and the BMW PGA Championship the DP World Tour

2023 NFL Season

The package covering all 18 weeks of the regular season begins this week and costs £99.The season ante-post write up is live now for subscribers here and the Week 1 write up is live today.

The Rugby World Cup

The Betting Emporium package is available now costing £50. The first write-up, including all the outright, pool and player markets is available now to subscribers here and the write-up for the matches over the first weekend is now live.

Previous Rugby World Cup Results 2015 +112 points ROI 28% 2019 +122 points ROI 47%

Free Tip

Cricket 2nd ODI England v New Zealand 11am Sunday Southampton

This is the second game of a four match ODI series following the drawn T20 series earlier this month, a warm-up for the 50 over World Cup in India starting on 5^th October where England are defending champions. Current ODI world rankings have New Zealand 4^th and England 5^th, and the two play each other in their first game of the World Cup in Ahmedabad.

The England squad for this series is that for the World Cup, where the provisional squad had a major controversy with the surprising omission of Harry Brook, and the return of Ben Stokes from ODI retirement probably as a batter only a partial cause of the top six logjam. Brooks has now been added to the squad for this series and I would expect to ultimately be in the World Cup Squad.

The probable aim of the team selection in India, with games to be played in places like Lucknow and in the far north at Dharamsala, will be to support Rashid with another couple of spinning options in Livingstone and Moeen but the selection of six seam options, albeit three of them via all-rounders looks a bit top heavy. We’ll see if the final squad has any adjustments. It will be interesting to see if these games are played on any used pitches to give practice for sub-continent conditions.

New Zealand are captained by Trent Boult and have their top batsman Kane Williamson just coming back from a serious injury suffered at the start of the IPL. As we saw in the T20 series, and in a lot of recent World Cups (reached the last four or better in six of the last eight editions) they are not to be under-estimated in short form cricket. Many of their players are experienced franchise competitors worldwide.

I am writing before the result of the first ODI at Cardiff on Friday is known. For that game England selected Brook as opener (a pre-cursor of things to come?) with Roy and Bairstow injured and a bowling attack of Willey/Topley/Woakes/Atkinson and Rashid.

Looking at England player markets, and aware that rotation across the squad will be the name of the game throughout this warm-up series once again the England batting market is congested. Root as the "glue" around which the dashers play is probably the most reasonable and consistent option at around 7/2.

In the bowling market Adil Rashid is a veteran of 125 ODIs and England’s front-line spinner. With 183 wickets in the international format at under a run a ball he is assured of his full complement of overs here and his variations give him a wicket taking potential that the other part-time spin options should lack. At around 7/2 with pitches baked by a week of solid sunshine, he is a solid bet in this market

10 points Adil Rashid top England wicket-taker at 7/2* with William Hill and Bet365. (*first ODI price, will update when the second game prices go up)

The Splits

A generation ago the multi-player bench came in for safety reasons to ensure players didn’t come on and play in positions they weren’t trained for particularly in the front row of the scrum. However strategies have evolved and teams most usually go for a 5-3 split  calculating the risk of injury/fatigue in certain positions. A partial move to 6-2 was teams like South Africa playing to their strengths.

The potential safety angle aside, 7-1 is a recently rare innovation in rugby. Many defensive patterns have been imported from Rugby League and attacking patterns in many teams are moribund. In a World Cup, particularly in the knock-out stages the risk of injuries mid-game in the backs makes a 7-1 split unlikely.

However the advent of the “hybrid” player increases the multi-skilled player’s opportunity to play at the highest level for their country. For example South Africa flanker Kwagga Smith has played hundreds of sevens games and could line up at winger whilst France’s Sekou Macalou can play flanker or winger.

StattoBets Dave Monthly Subscription - Soccer - Tennis - Darts

Stattobets write ups, analysis and bets are available to monthly subscribers.

Results = points bet 34780 profit +1506.90 ROI +4.33% Full details here

Monthly subs are £50 a month and can be cancelled at any time. You can sign up here. 

Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated on 1^st July 2023. They can be found by clicking RESULTS

If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £67,126 All bets have an ROI +3.05%

A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £71,176 a 1678% increase 

 

 

 

 

The Road to Riches Weekend of 2nd-3rd September

Coming up this weekend

• Horse Racing, On the flat at Beverley, Chester and Sandown, on the all-weather at Chelmsford City and Wolverhampton and over the jumps at Newton Abbot
• Football, the Premier League fixtures include Arsenal v Manchester United.
• Cricket, the Second T20I between England and New Zealand in Birmingham.
• Rugby Union, the Rugby World Cup starts next week
• Formula One, the Italian Grand Prix
• Tennis the US Open continues.
• Golf  the Irish Open on the DP World Tour

2023 NFL Season

The package covering all 18 weeks of the regular season begins in early September and costs £99.The season ante-post write up is live now for subscribers here .

The Rugby World Cup

The Betting Emporium package is available now costing £50. The first write-up, including all the outright, pool and player markets is available now to subscribers here.

Previous Rugby World Cup Results 2015 +112 points ROI 28% 2019 +122 points ROI 47%

Free Tip

Cricket T20 International England v New Zealand Friday 6pm Old Trafford

This is the second game of a four match T20I series ahead of a four match ODI series, itself a warm-up for the 50 over World Cup in India in October. There is also a T20 World Cup next year.

In the ever more crowded international schedule including a proliferation of new franchise tournaments across the world, England last played limited overs cricket in February in Bangladesh, winning an ODI series 2-1 but losing the T20s 3-0. New Zealand meanwhile lost an ODI series to Pakistan 4-1 but won the T20 series 2-1.

The England squad contains a deep and strong batting line up with Buttler, Bairstow, Brook, Malan, Roy, Livingstone and Jacks plus all-rounders Moeen and Sam Curran all now successful franchise players in the format. In the first game at Durham the “locks” in the 50 over team were batting in the positions they are expected to in the World Cup, namely Bairstow opening, Buttler 5, Moeen 6 and Livingstone 7

The bowling attack selected in the squad is where there is experimentation with Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse and Luke Wood all new or relatively new to international cricket as the selectors look to broaden the talent pool ahead of next Summer’s big tournament.

New Zealand’s squad meanwhile is experienced. Players like Finn Allen, Devon Conway (a big success opening the batting for CSK when winning the IPL this year), Glenn Phillips, Daryl Mitchell and Jimmy Neesham are all familiar to domestic cricket watchers this season and the bowling line up containing Henry, Milne and Santner alongside captain Tim Southee is well-rounded.

In the first game at Durham on Wednesday England restricted New Zealand to 139 on a slow pitch and won with six overs to spare by seven wickets.

Looking at England player markets for the first two games, the top batsman market was a really tough one. England bat down to 8 (Sam Curran, who bats 4 or 5 in other T20 teams) and I decided it was to be avoided.

The top bowler market has less depth, five front line bowlers are being supported by part-time spinners Livingstone and Jacks. Whilst we should expect some team rotation through a four match series, I am not sure there will be too many changes to an impressive winning team for the second game.

In the first game Luke Wood and Curran took the new ball, Brydon Carse was first change and Rashid and Ali bowled a full complement on a friendly pitch for them

Prices for the second game, from William Hill, are:

Atkinson 100/30

Curran 100/30

Jordan 100/30

Wood 7/2

Carse 9/2

Ahmed 5/1

Moeen 5/1

Atkinson, Jordan and Ahmed are currently in reserve. It was notable in the recent Hundred tournament how few wickets Sam Curran took, 6 in 9 games this despite a new ball that swung in the early overs throughout the tournament (conjecture has it that the white balls in use this summer have a more pronounced seam than normally). Luke Wood meanwhile, a fellow left arm seamer, has taken 15 wickets inside the Powerplay across the T20 Blast and Hundred this year, only two players across both competitions have taken more. Wood backed this up with 3-37 in the first T20I recovering despite being hit for three sixes in the first over of the match

At 7/2 he’s decent value to back that up here

10 points Luke Wood Top England bowler 2^nd T20I v New Zealand 4/1 Betfair Sportsbook and Paddy Power, 7/2 William Hill 100/30 Bet365

 

Discipline

In the recent Rugby World Cup Warm Up Match at Twickenham against Wales Owen Farrell was sent off at Twickenham for driving his shoulder into the head of an opponent. The England captain initially avoided a ban after the team’s lawyer argued successfully in a virtual disciplinary hearing that there had been enough mitigation for the red card to be downgraded to yellow, because of the “sudden” movement of the ball-carrier.

World Rugby then took the rare step of appealing its own disciplinary panel’s decision. The fresh appeal panel ruled that Farrell's failure to attempt to wrap his arm in the tackle meant the foul play review officer was correct in his decision to upgrade to a red card during the match. The panel therefore deemed the tackle was "always illegal", and no mitigation can be applied to a tackle that is "always illegal" under World Rugby's head contact process.

For more than four years, World Rugby has been committed to a policy of trying to force players to tackle lower through the use of red cards, bans and, more recently, a tackle education programme. It does not appear to be working.

The concussion rate continues to rise and defenders continue to risk these rugby league-style tackles, which are deemed by World Rugby to be the most dangerous in the game but are not illegal.

Players look to tackle upright and with force for four reasons: to make a dominant impact, to target the ball in the hope of ripping it clear, to be in the best position to execute a turnover once the ball-carrier is on the ground and to prevent off-loads.

Players understand the safety concerns but if they don’t defend that way they risk being dropped. The players therefore find themselves caught between what the game demands of them on the field to win matches and what the lawmakers demand of them to make the sport appear safer.

Farrell addressed the issue during the Premiership season

“If you are constantly being passive you probably won’t get picked next week. It’s a fine line and I don’t think people quite understand when it gets slowed down on TV how quick those decisions are on the field.”

Players sent off with a first offence can attend World Rugby’s tackle school the equivalent of a speed awareness course. World Rugby argues that the programme has a 5% reoffending rate, but it is seen elsewhere as no more than a tick-box exercise that has no hope of rectifying deep-seated technical issues.

World Rugby has to be aware that the Farrell affair has damaged the sport’s credibility. It would be a surprise if World Rugby did not eventually react by pushing through a lower tackle height in professional rugby.

StattoBets Dave Monthly Subscription - Soccer - Tennis - Darts

Stattobets write ups, analysis and bets are available to monthly subscribers.

Results = points bet 34780 profit +1506.90 ROI +4.33% Full details here

Monthly subs are £50 a month and can be cancelled at any time. You can sign up here. 

Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated on 1^st July 2023. They can be found by clicking RESULTS

If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £67,126 All bets have an ROI +3.05%

A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £71,176 a 1678% increase 

 

 

 

 

The Road to Riches Weekend of 26th-27th August

Coming up this weekend

• Horse Racing, On the flat at Goodwood, Newmarket, Redcar, Windsor and York and over the jumps at Cartmel
• Football, the Premier League fixtures include Newcastle United v Liverpool.
• Cricket, the Hundred concludes, the Eliminator on Saturday and the final on Sunday.
• Rugby Union, the final 2023 Rugby World Cup Warm up matches
• Formula One, the Dutch Grand Prix
• Tennis the US Open begins.
• Golf the European Masters on the DP World Tour

2023 NFL Season

The package covering all 18 weeks of the regular season begins in early September and costs £99. An article describing what to expect from the package has been published, free to read here.  The season ante-post write up will be live on 28th August.

Free Tip

Rugby World Cup Warm Up New Zealand v South Africa 7.30pm Friday at Twickenham

A final warm up match ahead of the start of the Rugby World Cup on 9^th December where these two teams are in the same half of the draw and potential Quarter final opponents.

New Zealand were in the relative doldrums a year ago, including a home series loss to Ireland and a defeat to Argentina but prospects have improved dramatically this year particularly up front where a new forwards coach has got the pack really humming. They were dominant during the recent rugby Championship and their success in that truncated tournament propelled them back to World Cup favouritism ahead of France.

South Africa lost 35-20 in Auckland over the summer, the game lost in the first 20 minutes when they went 17-0 down before achieving parity in the remainder of the game. Their traditional strength up front is a given but in the absence of first choice fly half Handre Pollard for the World cup their attacking approach may have to broaden as they don’t have another game controller/kicker like him.

As it is, pending this match, South Africa go into the World Cup having not beaten a top four ranked side in more than 12 months though these are usually gritty narrow losses including 19-16 in Ireland and 30-26 in France. If they are peaking for the major tournament at the end of this four-year cycle, they are leaving it late.

Supporters will say that South Africa won the 2019 World Cup even though New Zealand were pre-tournament favourites and England were widely tipped to win the final.

What some people often forget, though, is that they had beaten the All Blacks in New Zealand prior to that World Cup, had won the 2019 Rugby Championship a couple of months before the tournament in Japan and had also beaten England in a three-Test series staged in 2018.

All that said South Africa have picked a strong line up here, and all the noises are that this is being treated as a major one-off test match and thoughts of the World Cup only begin after the match.

New Zealand are just five point favourites to win the match, which would seem a skinny spread given they have picked a powerful team pretty close to first choice and their recent supremacy over the same opponents in the Rugby Championship. They have to be supported on such terms given everything we’ve seen from the two sides recently.

11 points New Zealand -5 points at 10/11 generally

 

The Rugby World Cup Betting Emporium package is available now costing £50. The first write-up, including all the outright, pool and player markets will be available on Tuesday 29^th August and will be available to subscribers here.

Previous Rugby World Cup Results 2015 +112 points ROI 28% 2019 +122 points ROI 47%

 

The Jury is Out

This weekend sees the conclusion of the 2023 Hundred competition, the third edition of the event. Once against this year the women’s Hundred has been a big success providing game by game exposure including on terrestrial television and following on from an exciting multi-format Ashes earlier in the summer.

The men’s tournament has had better games than last year where the top few sides were way ahead of the rest of the tournament. Despite mixed weather, good pitches have ensured some high scoring games including a score over 200. Ticket sales have been very good. Average attendance for men’s matches is at over 80% of capacity.

The men’s tournament has been hit with the withdrawal of big-name players, for whom the proliferation of global franchise leagues is lucrative but comes at a cost of increased injuries. It does not feature any of Australia’s Ashes players who mostly did not even enter the draft. There are no Indian players and there are no signs that the Board of Control for Cricket in India is going to let them participate. The situation is likely to get worse rather than better in the future, with other leagues offering much bigger value deals than the £125,000 top contract in the Hundred. The new American Major League Cricket competition is set to expand and clash with the Hundred directly, and is offering contracts of a much higher value thanks to backing from the IPL and private investment.

The tournament is not making any significant profit and the knock-on effect is that the ECB will not be able to hike the value of the player contracts and will not be able to compete with richer leagues. The 100-ball format has not been picked up anywhere else in the world meaning that the value of the intellectual property is limited and unless the ECB decides to sell off either the competition or the teams to private investors, it is hard to see how it will have the financial clout to compete with other franchises around the world.

The impact of the Hundred on the rest of domestic cricket remains large. Taking up the whole of August the Ashes were squeezed into the six weeks previous and the 300 men’s professional players without a Hundred contract have been playing in a  50 over competition that for many of the counties who have lost up to 12 players to the Hundred is relegated to development status. The ten counties that do not have a Hundred team at their ground feel marginalised and cannot access to the revenue that the eight host grounds command and they argue it is increasing the gap between the wealthier counties and the rest.

The future remains in doubt. Upcoming discussions in the autumn about the domestic schedule are mooted to include options such as ending both the T20 Blast and the Hundred and replacing them with a T20 competition which involves all of the 18 counties, although probably not playing under county names.

There is no doubt that the Hundred is bringing in new audiences to the game but it is unclear yet if those who come to the tournament as their first experience of cricket then go on to fall in love with the game. There remains outright hostility from many established cricket fans, particularly County Members and those with an affinity to existing teams.

The Jury is still very much out.

StattoBets Dave Monthly Subscription - Soccer - Tennis - Darts

Stattobets write ups, analysis and bets are available to monthly subscribers.

Results = points bet 34780 profit +1506.90 ROI +4.33% Full details here

Monthly subs are £50 a month and can be cancelled at any time. You can sign up here. 

Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated on 1^st July 2023. They can be found by clicking RESULTS

If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £67,126 All bets have an ROI +3.05%

A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £71,176 a 1678% increase 

 

 

 

 

The Road to Riches Weekend of 19th-20th August

Coming up this weekend

• Horse Racing, On the flat at Ascot, Ayr, Haydock, Lingfield, Newmarket and Redcar
• Football, the Premier League fixtures include Manchester City v Newcastle United
• Cricket, the Hundred continues.
• Rugby Union, 2023 Rugby World Cup Warm up matches
• Tennis US Open Qualification.
• Golf the Tour Championship on the USPGA and the Czech Masters on the DP World Tour

York Ebor Festival

We have just added the York Ebor Festival - Full Package (23rd - 26th August 2023) to our homepage, the cost for all of Neil Channing’s write-ups is £125 here 

2023 NFL Season

The package covering all 18 weeks of the regular season begins in early September and costs £99. An article describing what to expect from the package has been published, free to read here  The season ante-post write up will be live on 28th August.

Rugby World Cup

The 2023 Rugby World Cup in France begins in September. The package will cost just £50 and is available here  The tournament write-up including all available markets will be available on 29th August.

Free Tip

The Hundred: Southern Brave v Oval Invincibles 6pm, Southampton

We are now well into the second half of the group stages of the Hundred, with a reminder that the  group winner goes straight through to the Lords final, whilst second and third place finishers play in an eliminator match for the right to meet them.

The Oval Invincibles are currently top of the table, with four wins and a tie from their six matches.  Here they play the Southern Brave with 7 points including 3 wins from their six matches and currently in second place in the table.

The squad looks to have all bases covered and unlike the first two Hundreds is delivering on their strength on paper. The top order contains big hitting batsmen in Jacks, Roy and Klaasan. Sam Curran in the primary all-rounder whilst the bowling ranks contain the pace of Australian Spencer Johnson and England hopeful Gus Atkinson supported by the leg spin of Zampa (who has replaced Narine for the second half of the tournament with Narine off to the CPL) and Sowter.

The side suffered a blow last Sunday when they lost the (at the time) top scoring batsman Jordan Cox, with three fifties in the tournament so far, to a broken finger and both Tom Curran and Atkinson have missed games with minor injuries.

Tuesday’s team in their high scoring win against the London Spirit was as follows

Jacks

Roy

Klaasen

S Curran

Billings

Muyeye

Whiteley

Zampa

Chappell

S Johnson

Sowter

Expecting Atkinson and Tom Curran to return for this game in Southampton.

There is often an opportunity in the top batsman market, with fewer realistic options in a short 100 ball innings to top score bar a top order collapse.

The Jacks and Roy opening combination is somewhat “boom or bust”. Jacks is the second top scorer in the competition as I write with 169 runs in 6 innings, Roy has 107 in 6.

The top scorer in the competition is now Heinrich Klaasen with 171 runs now promoted to three in the absence of Cox. A really powerful striker he has a strike rate of 180 in the competition and has hit 17 sixes. With one of the openers often out early (many of the opening batsmen in the competition are proving vulnerable to exaggerated swing in the early powerplay overs) Klaasen is a decent prospect in the Oval Invincibles Top batsman market

10 points Heinrich Klaasen top Oval Invincibles scorer at 11/4 with Bet365, more firms to follow before Saturday

 

Adapting

Recently a number of NFL running backs held a Zoom meeting to consider options to address their difficulties in securing acceptable non-rookie contracts. After that meeting Cleveland Browns star Nick Chubb admitted to reporters, “Right now, there’s really nothing we can do.” It’s a problem years in the making, intensifying because running back injuries keep increasing and longevity of elite play at the position keeps shrinking in a game that gets faster and more violent every year.

Teams avoid committing too much to players who don’t age well but these teams are helped by the rookie wage scale which puts severe restrictions on the earning potential of running backs when they are healthiest, only to deny the best of them top-of-the-market money in their second contracts after they  outperformed their initial deals.

There is a general belief in the NFL era of a high volume of passing and franchise Quarterbacks that the running back has lost value and that is most obvious among the big bruising “bell-cow” runners who will carry the ball 300 times a season of which there are fewer in the league each year, in part because fewer teams are willing to play a brand of football amenable to their style and in part because the college game is producing fewer “Derrick Henry”’s. However the importance of the run game is already in partial recovery as offenses adjust to defenses that have tailored their personnel to play better in space, creating the blossoming era of the so-called running back-wide receiver hybrid.

Lines have blurred at many positions already: outside linebacker and safety; wide receiver and tight end; defensive end and tackle; defensive end and linebacker. There are attempts to erase the mark dividing running back and wide receiver for example a Deebo Samuel here, a Christian McCaffrey there.

Interestingly, after the San Francisco 49ers traded for McCaffrey last season and put him with Samuel and all their versatile talent, they turned into a machine that a 262^nd draft pick quarterback Brock Purdy could lead deep into the play-offs.

In the 2023 NFL draft running backs Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs were drafted high, Robinson drafted eight to the Atlanta Falcons. The Detroit Lions drafted Gibbs at twelve. Whereas a player like Derrick Henry is a Hummer,  Robinson and Gibbs are convertibles. Robinson has the ability to play slot receiver. The Falcons are experimenting with using him at multiple positions., The Lions plan to line Gibbs up at receiver too.

There’s a chance that Robinson and Gibbs could catch passes down the field and line up anywhere on any given play. As the sport changes, with more sophisticated passing games and players who are taught to be versatile at early ages, perhaps they will signal the next phase of running back versatility.

When asked once what position he plays, Deebo Samuel said “wide back” meaning “a wide receiver playing running back.” And he had a contentious contract dispute a year ago but the system eventually rewarded him with a three-year extension worth more than $71m.

Maybe there’s really nothing the running back can do. However in the face of the economics of the sport, athletes are already adapting.

 

StattoBets Dave Monthly Subscription - Soccer - Tennis - Darts

Stattobets write ups, analysis and bets are available to monthly subscribers.

Results = points bet 34780 profit +1506.90 ROI +4.33% Full details here

Monthly subs are £50 a month and can be cancelled at any time. You can sign up here. 

Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated on 1^st July 2023. They can be found by clicking RESULTS

If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £67,126 All bets have an ROI +3.05%

A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £71,176 a 1678% increase