England and Australia have produced some fantastic games in the Ashes down the years, but the third test of the 2019 Ashes series is a match that will go down in history as one of the greatest ever played.
England fans, who are old enough to remember it, regularly talk about the Headingley Ashes Test in 1981, which saw England surrender a second innings lead of 227 runs, only to go on and win the test by 18 runs. They achieved this thanks to a magnificent 149 not out from Ian Botham and 8 wickets from Bob Willis. This match is often regarded as one of England’s greatest victories, but Headingley 2019 is certainly right up there.
When Jack Leach came out to join Ben Stokes at the crease, there were 72 runs that needed to be scored with just one wicket remaining. Nobody who was watching gave England a chance, and those of an English persuasion had consigned themselves to Australia retaining the coveted urn. It was probably a great day for online cricket betting sites as many punters would have put their money on an easy Australia win.
However, what Stokes did next was beggars’ belief. The all-rounder, who led England to their first World Cup title back in July, went on the attack and started hitting the Australian bowlers all over the park. 72 runs to win soon became 50 odd, 50 odd soon became 30 odd, 30 odd soon became 20 odd, and 20 odd soon became single figures.
The crowd started to believe, and the Aussies started to wilt – they became so desperate to pick up the final wicket that they used their final review on an LBW shout that pitched 4 or 5 inches outside the line of leg stump. This absolute waste of a review cost them dearly as Stokes would have been given out on review with England needing just two runs to win.
Leach, who made the most important 1 not out of his life, tied the match with a clip to leg and Stokes smashed the next ball through the covers to send the England fans into raptures and the Australian players to their haunches.
What made his innings so remarkable was that he knew that one error of judgement would see the urn booked on a flight to Sydney. You can only imagine the immense pressure that he was under, but Stokes seems to thrive when the pressure is at its greatest. Somehow, after being bowled out for a paltry and embarrassing 67 in the first innings, England had tied the series 1-1.
This defeat will be hard for Australia to get over, but they must remember that Steve Smith should be fit to play in the fourth test at Old Trafford. Smith is undoubtedly their best batsman and England have struggled to get him out (he has scored 378 runs so far this series at an average of 126.00). If he continues to play as well as he has been playing, then there is still a very good chance that the urn will be staying Down Under.
It is, as they say, still very much all to play for.
Betting on Cricket
As a sport that ebbs and flows like no other, it is little wonder why betting on cricket is extremely popular. This is because there are just so many different markets that you can bet on, ensuring that boredom never rises its ugly head. We will now take a look at some of the different popular markets that you can bet on.
One of the most popular markets is the match winner, but the odds can, at times, be pretty poor here. If you are after a riskier bet with much better odds, you can try and predict which player will score the most runs, or which player will pick up the most wickets. If you prefer even trickier markets to predict, then you should try your hand at predicting the player that will be man of the match or player of the series.
Other fun markets include trying to guess the number of boundaries that will be scored, the winner of the coin toss, the total number of runs that will be scored and the team that will score their first ten runs the quickest.
When it comes to in-play markets, you can try and guess how many runs will be scored from each ball, the batsman that will lose their wicket next, their mode of dismissal, and whether a batsman will score 50 or 100 runs.
See, the list of markets that you can bet on really is vast.
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