The third season of The Hundred gets underway on Tuesday and having gone through the tournament outright betting market, there is enough time to have a look at the top batter market for the season, which a couple of firms have priced up.
Dawid Malan was the top scorer in this tournament last season on his way to forcing himself back into the England T20 squad for their World Cup win a few months later. He is back for another go at The Hundred but some world class talent will be joining him.
Recent Winners
2022 – Dawid Malan
2021 – Liam Livingstone
Market Leaders
Jos Buttler is the favourite to be the top scorer in the competition this season. With no England fixtures during the event the white ball captain will be around for the entirety of it barring injury so he looks to be a worthy favourite. He didn’t really convince for Lancashire in the Vitality Blast and he has captaincy duties to take his mind off his batting. Buttler did score 203 runs in just five matches in this tournament a year ago though but he felt in better form then. It is stupid to rule out a world class talent but at the price he isn’t for me.
Devon Conway has gone pretty well around the franchise scene for the past 12 months and the Southern Brave will be hoping that he continues that for them this season. He has been playing in Major League Cricket recently and only finished his stint there on Friday so might need a game or two to adjust to the conditions and the time zone which isn’t ideal. He also lacks the firepower that some players have so he isn’t for me at 10/1.
Will Smeed scored a century in this tournament last season and had a good T20 Blast spearheading the batting for the eventual champions Somerset. He isn’t just a Taunton specialist and will be given the licence to thrill by the Birmingham Phoenix. If he comes off in even half of the matches then he will score nicely given the speed in which he scores his runs. He is around the 11/1 mark to top score this season and is the first in the market that would interest me.
Alex Hales and Dawid Malan are next in the betting at 12/1. The first issue is they play for the same team so they could take runs from each other. Malan showed that he can top score for the Rockets last season and while he hasn’t caught the eye as much this season that is largely because England haven’t played a white ball game yet. His form for Yorkshire has been decent, unlike Hales who has had a quiet campaign by his standards and has been in Canada recently so might not be as sharp as he might otherwise be.
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Limiting the Field
Whenever we bet on a market like this that has so many runners and riders we need to lessen the field and concentrate on a smaller pool of players in which to pick our bets out from. There are a number of factors we can use to get the field reduced a little and know where to concentrate.
Firstly it is always worth a look at who plays on which grounds. Certain grounds in any country are higher scoring than others and that is very much the case here. Trent Bridge and Headingley will be high scoring grounds in this competition while Edgbaston and Old Trafford have seen plenty of cricket and might not be so conducive to good batting. If we apply a point system to the teams on show on these grounds we could whittle the field down.
Another way to whittle down the field is to take players from the sides who you think will make the finals. It might only be an extra innings or two but it could be the difference between winning or not, or even making the top four or not. The other thing to remember is to take someone who will bat high up in their team’s batting order. While we will see some pyrotechnics from those lower down the order players guaranteed to get eight decent innings will outscore the cameos more often than not.
Profile
This has been a bit of a strange summer as usually we have had a lot of international cricket as well as plenty of men’s and women’s domestic cricket but that hasn’t been the case in 2023 so by and large the pitches should all be good, with the exception of perhaps Edgbaston which has staged more than most, albeit nothing like last year where the Commonwealth Games has taken place before this tournament. In terms of limiting it down it is probably only done on boundary size in which case it might be worth leaving out Southern Brave, Welsh Fire and to a lesser extent Oval Invincibles players as the boundaries on their home ground can be quite big.
Betting
The player I like this season is Zak Crawley. He is in excellent form after smashing Australia to all parts this summer and he has a good aggression about him that can lead him to score well for the London Spirit. England are done for Test cricket in 2023 so he should be available for the entire tournament and with half of his matches at Lord’s I expect him to score very well this season as he goes about potentially securing some franchise cricket through the winter.
Crawley should open the batting for the Spirit, potentially alongside Adam Rossington which would be good because he starts off at full power which means that Crawley can warm into his work before he starts going on the offensive, although as we have seen in The Ashes he is perfectly capable of hitting the turbo button from the first ball as well. You can get Crawley at 25/1 to top score in this tournament and with a T20 average of 29.38 and strike rate of 140.97 he’ll do for me.
Tips
Back Z.Crawley Top Tournament Batter (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 26.00 with William Hill (1/4 1-4)
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