Start the Kab - Ali proves a point

Yesterday's Result: £1,007.11

Here's the earlier blog entry on the Davydenko match fixing allegations.

When you're on a roll I guess you're on a roll. And at the moment I'm considering entry to this! No, seriously, I was lucky enough to have another great result in yesterday's Pro40 match between Essex and Worcestershire. Obviously well pleased again and hoping I can carry the good form into tomorrow's Twenty 20 finals.

As could perhaps be expected this summer even Essex's County Ground, statistically the driest ground in county cricket, couldn't escape the rain completely. Luckily the match wasn't delayed too long though and the game was only shortened to 38 overs aside.

Worcestershire batted first and got off to a flyer. A couple of early wickets then slowed them down but a Jaques century provided a solid backbone to the innings, led to some useful partnerships and resulted in a not too shabby 225 by the innings break. The total included a quickfire 19 of 17 balls from Kabir Ali at the end that included a truly enormous six. You could be forgiven for thinking he was showing the Twenty20 World Cup selectors what he thought of their decision to leave him out of the 30 man squad.

I'd said on the Betfair cricket forum towards the end of the Worcestershire innings that I wasn't convinced by the 1.8 about Essex. And during the innings break I said if I had a free bet it would go on Worcestershire. I decided to keep my powder dry though until the start of the innings. I was sat on around £350 green each side and just wanted to see what the ball movement etc was like. It's no secret what the key to the game was. Essex needed a quick start to prevent being totally strangled out of the game by the spinners. Worcestershire needed quick wickets to pile the pressure on and raise the required run rate.

Well a couple of balls into Kabir Ali's first over and the movement was massive. After his quick but impressive knock he'd obvioulsy decided to show the selectors what he could do with the ball too. And that turned out to be a hell of a lot. Put simply he ripped through the Essex top order taking four wickets in an impressive opening spell. I got some on before the first wicket fell, some more after and never really looked back. It was always going to be a struggle for Essex after such a poor start and with the required run rate already spiralling above 6 an over. It wasn't too long before the Worcestershire price was sub 1.1, and eventually 1.01.

An impressive 7th wicket partnership for Essex bounced the Worcestershire price a little - peaking at 1.08 / 1.09 but if the match wasn't effectively over before that was broken it was after. In the end Worcestershire ran out comfortable winners by 62 runs. Shame Bumble wasn't on commentary to give us the "Start the Kab" line. Not surprisingly Ali picked up the Man of the Match award. And answered the selectors in the best possible way.

I actually made £1000.64 on the match. The other £6.47 came from the Hampshire v Nottinghamshire match the day before. Didn't think I was going to be able to do any of it. A last minute change of plans meant I could catch a few overs in the middle of the match. I screwed up ending up with an all red position at the end of the first innings but was able to quickly turn it around at the start of the second. Basically the minute I could go all green I did - and then headed out for drinks and dinner. Shame as the second innings looked like one way traffic in the market and it could have turned into quite a profitable one. Still, all work and no play....

Anyway, looking forward to tomorrow a lot. Twenty20 finals day is one of the highlights of the domestic cricket season and I hope it's a cracker. Best of luck if you brave the markets!

Finally, one more blog I didn't mention yesterday. Freddy has started one over at Life and Sports Punting. He keeps a daily record of profit and loss with commentary on what he got up to. Had a losing start but is turning it around nicely. And it seems having to write about losses is already helping with discipline!