Weekly Articles "Road to Riches" by Rich 'Tighty' Prew
The Road to Riches Weekend of 20th-21st September
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, On the flat at Bath, Chester, Doncaster, Lingfield and Musselburgh.
- Football, Premier League fixtures include Arsenal v Manchester City and Liverpool v Everton.
- Cricket, England’s T20 series against Ireland continues in Dublin.
- Formula One, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix
- Golf, The Ryder Cup next week at Bethpage in New York
Free Tip
English Premiership Rugby 2025 season ante-post
The new season starts next Friday, plays across 18 rounds until the top four in the regular season table play in the post-season knockouts next April-May with the Grand Final at Twickenham.
Last year Bath finished top in the regular season 11 points clear of Leicester with Sale Sharks and Bristol Bears rounding out the top four. Bath beat Leicester in the Grand Final.
For Bath this was the culmination of a five-year rebuild with new coaching, considerable investment in players (Finn Russell etc) under local entrepreneur owners.
Structurally each team operates within a £6.4m player salary cap (with one marquee player excepted) and logically this should lead to some parity depending on recruitment and roster management. It has been possible for Bath to go from the bottom three years ago to the top now and Leicester from 9th to 2nd in two years. This year though there has been relatively little movement into the league in the marquee player category. Many sides are struggling financially relying on benefactor investment.
Santiago Carreras and Henry Arundell to Bath, Louis Rees-Zammit back to rugby at Bristol, Australians Len Ikitau and Tom Hooper to Exeter are the highest profile arrivals this season.
Subject to meeting the eligibility criteria for promotion (ground capacity), the champions of the new Championship season (second division) season will play in a two-leg play-off against the team which finishes 10th in the Premiership table at the end of the regular season. The winner, based on aggregate score, will play in the Premiership for the following season.
This introduces an element of jeopardy to this season for two reasons. Newcastle, tenth for successive years but protected from relegation by lack of promotion eligibility of the Championship winners, have been taken over by Red Bull with significant player recruitment already and more to come. They are no longer short prices to finish bottom. Secondly Worcester Warriors are back, in the Championship as potential winners of the division, also with player investment and a 14,000-capacity modern stadium.
A couple of firms at the time of writing (Bet365, Betfred) offer each-way terms of 1/3 1-2 which give us the opportunity to take on Bath (6/4 favourites to win for a second year) for each way value. Here are the best prices at those firms:
Bath 6/4
Saracens 100/30
Northampton 5/1
Leicester 11/2
Sale Sharks 10/1
Bristol 16/1
Harlequins 28/1
Newcastle Red Bulls 40/1
Gloucester 40/1
Exeter 40/1
Leaving Bath aside for the purposes of this exercise, I do expect Leicester to take a step back following significant retirements and departures and Northampton to recover from their poor season last year. Saracens have Owen Farrell back but look short to me.
I like the look of Sale Sharks, 3rd last year, at 10/1 in a relatively stable year for squad strength across the league. They’ll miss the injured Tom Curry until after the Autumn Internationals but still have a squad with a lot of depth with George Ford, Ben Curry, Tom Roebuck and an entire England International front row when at full strength.
10 points each-way (1/3 1-2) Sale Sharks to win the Gallagher PREM Rugby at 10-1 Bet365, 9-1 Betfred.
Relaunch
A men’s Twenty20 Champions League will be relaunched as soon as September next year, after the tournament was backed by key member countries at the International Cricket Council’s annual conference in Singapore.
Test cricket’s future and a possible split into two divisions may also be decided by the end of the year, after the ICC formalised a working group to reshape the game’s calendar from 2027 onwards. It will be expected to present interim findings and recommendations to the ICC board, chaired by India’s Jay Shah, before the end of this year.
There is now a distinct possibility that the number of Test playing countries may be capped, on the basis that only a few currently make money from the game’s oldest format and that many nations do not have the resources to support the systems required for developing competitive Test teams.
The first iteration of the T20 Champions League was launched in 2008 and lasted until 2014, before the company then known as ESPN Star cut its losses after paying an inflated rights fee of $1bn for the event, having lost out on the first rights to the Indian Premier League.
Cricket Australia, India’s BCCI and Cricket South Africa were partners in the league, and ESPN Star’s rights fees helped to provide the seed funding for the first few years of the Big Bash League, before it began to generate its own significant broadcast rights revenue in 2013.
Since then, the T20 franchise circuit has exploded, and one of numerous complexities for the Champions League will be determinations about which clubs players choose to play for. Some of the world’s top T20 players can take part in at least two and often as many as four or five different franchise leagues per year.
It has not yet been decided how the finances of the new league will be split. Lobbying has continued for a parallel concept where a circuit of T20 tournaments are hosted around the world, bankrolled by Saudi Arabia, but the Kingdom’s future role may be as a potential host for the Champions League.
Among other decisions, the ICC board has approved a qualification model for the cricket tournament at the 2028 LA Olympics.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 1st June 2025. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £65,960 All bets have an ROI +2.55%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £69,960, a 1649% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 13th-14th September
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, On the flat at Bath, Chester, Doncaster, Lingfield and Musselburgh.
- Football, Premier League fixtures include Manchester City v Manchester United.
- Cricket, Vitality Blast T20 finals day and England’s T20 series against South Africa continues in Nottingham.
- Rugby Union, the Rugby Championship: Australia v Argentina and New Zealand v South Africa.
- Golf, The French Open on the DP World Tour
- Tennis, ATP China and Japan Opens.
Free Tip
Rugby championship Round 4
New Zealand v South Africa Wellington Saturday 8.05am
New Zealand beat South Africa 24-17 at Eden Park in round three of the Rugby Championship last weekend. South Africa weren’t too far off the All Blacks in the end, they were attacking under the posts at the end with a chance to draw but paid the price for inaccuracy and a comparatively poor kicking game. Their “bomb squad” of substitutes had got them back into the game from 17-3 down early on.
The result consolidates the All-Blacks’ position at the top of the Championship and they now have 10 points, while the Wallabies are one point adrift in second spot with the South Africa and Argentina level on five points apiece.
It was a vastly improved showing from Scott Robertson’s hosts as they showcased their defensive strength with a number of outstanding defensive stands. The Springboks will need to shore up their suspect lineout in Wellington this weekend for Round four. They had the edge at scrum time but the kicking game was imprecise.
All week coach Rassie Erasmus has rued the ‘stupid errors’ that cost his side, and alluded to the coaching staff making mistakes with their selections for the match and forecasting changes for Wellington. These then occurred with seven changes to the starting line-up including dropping Pollard from the match-day 23, returns for de Jager and Wiese in the pack and Reinach and Feinberg-Mngomezulu at 9-10 and the return to a 5-3 bench.
New Zealand have a couple of enforced changes too because of injury plus a couple of big calls too notablhy at scrum-half.
South Africa went off +3 last weekend and are +4.5 (6/4+ outright) for this game, where they should be improved it being clear where they needed work this week, and away from Eden Park. This time we get the 3-point penalty goal onside so I will try the handicap.
11 points South Africa +4.5 points at 10/11 generally
Changing the Hundred
After six months of negotiations after a live-auction process in January six of the eight Hundred franchise sales were completed prior to the 2025 Hundred.
Investors include four IPL franchises and another two winning bids involved Indian businessmen and some other very Bottom of Form
influential business figures amongst them the chief executives of Google and Microsoft in London Spirit and ex-NFL superstar quarterback Tom Brady at the Birmingham Phoenix.
£419m from the six completions has been transferred to the ECB (the £100m due from the sales of Oval Invincibles and Trent Rockets remains outstanding as they have yet to be completed).
The Hundred is likely to look very different in 12 months, however, with the new investors eager to make changes. With such a big Indian presence in the new ownership groups there is a clear majority in favour of switching to Twenty20, the globally recognised short format.
The Hundred’s main broadcaster, Sky Sports, expressed reservations about moving to T20 when the idea was first floated two years ago and its contract runs until 2028, but the power of the new money may be enough to bring it around. The BBC would definitely prefer the shorter format as matches are easier to fit into their evening schedules, but the corporation is not contributing much to the £35m-a-year joint deal with Sky, so will have less influence.
The name of the competition is unlikely to change even if the 100-ball format is dropped, as the ECB has spent more than £100m marketing it in a bid to bring in a new younger audience, which has been largely successful.
While the ECB technically owns the competition, the eight franchises will have 16 of the 20 votes on the new Hundred board that will control its governance.
All of the £520m-plus windfall will be handed over to the 18 first-class counties in the hope of ensuring their financial health for a generation. The grassroots game will receive a £50m investment. Having been tied into ECB commercial contracts since the Hundred began in 2021, the franchises are now free to do their own deals and given the contacts and expertise of many of the new investors, income levels are set to soar.
The so-called “tech titans” who have bought into London Spirit, for example, are already understood to have secured a lucrative new kit deal with Nike that will begin next season, while Sun TV and Reliance Industries (who are buying Oval Invincibles and own Indian TV monolith JioStar) are already working on new overseas broadcast deals.
In the short term at least most of the extra revenue will be spent on increasing the salary cap to attract better players in the hope of establishing the Hundred as the second-biggest short-form tournament after the IPL. With the top salary bracket for men’s currently £200,000 there was a lack of big names in this year’s competition, with Australian stars such as Mitchell Marsh and Glenn Maxwell preferring to play in the more lucrative Major League Cricket in the United States. The aspiration is to treble pay within the next few years. Recruiting Indian players would be a genuine gamechanger, but the Board of Control for Cricket in India is likely to continue blocking them from overseas competitions.
The investors have secured a veto on expanding the competition to 10 teams, which has been mooted by the ECB, so while new teams in the North East and South West will not be added imminently the identities of some of the existing franchises will differ from next season.
New names including the Manchester Super Giants have already been agreed, while despite some objections from Surrey the Oval team are likely to be rebranded as MI London, named after the Mumbai Indians, whose owners Reliance Industries Limited bought a 49% stake in the team.
The optics of an injured Ben Stokes pulling out of the Oval Test after bowling himself into the ground in a five-match series with India being crammed into 44 days to keep August free for the Hundred were awkward for the ECB, which has already acknowledged this error. The schedule has been changed next year and England will play two Tests against Pakistan during the competition.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 1st June 2025. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £65,960 All bets have an ROI +2.55%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £69,960, a 1649% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 6th-7th September
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, On the flat at Ascot, Haydock, Kempton and Thirsk. Over the jumps at Stratford-on-Avon and on the all-weather at Wolverhampton.
- Football, World Cup Qualifiers including England at home to Andorra and away to Serbia.
- NFL, Week 1 of the new Season
- Cricket, England’s ODI series against South Africa continues in Southampton.
- Rugby Union, the Rugby Championship: Australia v Argentina and New Zealand v South Africa.
- Formula One, the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
- Golf, The BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth on the DP World Tour and the Procore Championship in California on the USPGA.
- Tennis, ATP Hangzhou Open
2025 NFL Season
We have added the NFL 2025 (17 week regular season) to our home page.
Probably the best value package we do. Just £99 for the 17-week regular season
“What to Expect” is live now, free to read here
Ante-Post part one, Team Markets is live now here
Ante-Post part one, Player Markets is live now here
Subscribe for all the game write-ups here
Free Tip
Rugby Championship Round Three
New Zealand v South Africa, Eden Park Auckland, Saturday 7.05am
This is looking like the most evenly fought Rugby Championship in years. In the first two rounds South Africa lost one of two home games to Australia, whilst in Round Two Argentina secured their first home victory against New Zealand. They’ve now beaten New Zealand home and away in the last three years, dramatic progress for a side who only entered the Championship just over a decade ago.
This is South Africa’s first appearance at Eden Park since 2013. Last year they came back from 17-27 in Johannesburg to register a four-point win 31-27. They completed the double in Cape Town over the All Blacks the next week. Their winning streak over New Zealand is now four in a row.
This is the most formidable home venue for New Zealand. The All Blacks have not lost at Eden Park since 1994. They've gone 50 matches without defeat in that time against 12 different opponents There have been two draws – South Africa in 1994 and the Lions in 2017.
To understand the magnitude of fortress Eden Park, consider that South Africa have won four World Cups since the All Blacks last lost there.
There was a common theme in the early stages of this Rugby Championship.
‘The All Blacks are playing like the Springboks, the Springboks are playing like the All Blacks’ ie New Zealand playing with forward power, the kick-chase and a territorial game, South Africa playing expansively.
South Africa were certainly ambitious and for 20 minutes produced some spellbinding rugby to go 22-0 up against the Wallabies in the first round. They then were too loose and were well beaten in the second half. In worse weather in Cape Town in round 2 with Pollard at fly-half and Etzebeth back in the forwards they reverted somewhat to type and won.
For New Zealand their approach came unstuck in Argentina in Round Two when poor discipline resulted in three yellow cards, they were beaten in the aerial game and Argentina kicked lots of penalties. Perhaps playing 30 minutes of the game down a man, we can make allowances for the All Blacks’ struggles in attack but unfortunately their backline failing to really fire has been a common theme over the past 12 months.
They also have an injury crisis at scrum half, with three players injured, the least severely injured is on the bench.
This should obviously be a very close game. New Zealand are -3.5 on the handicap spread but really with New Zealand mid-transformation to a more prosaic chance South Africa will never have a better chance to win at Eden Park. It’s potentially going to be wet on Saturday night, there is going to be a lot of kicking and in those circumstances there is no one better than Handre Pollard at controlling a game.
10 points South Africa to win at 6/4 Betfred, StarSports, 7/5 Bet365
Solvents.
Bath Rugby is facing mounting financial pressure, along with all the clubs in the Gallagher Premiership, as experts warn over the future of the sport. Despite their Premiership win in June which saw them win their first title for 29 years off the pitch there is less to celebrate.
Bath Rugby Limited turned over £20.8m for the financial year ending June 30, 2024. This was up on the £19.7m the year before, but it still made a loss of £3.6m, while its net debt stood at £17.2m.Each of the teams in the Gallagher Premiership was in the red for the financial year ended June 30, 2024.
Runners up Leicester Tigers. The club’s operating company Leicester Football Club Plc made a loss of £3.5m for the period despite turnover increasing to £21m from £19.4m the year before.
In the short term owners/benefactors are responsible for funding the clubs and their debts but the the prospect of the current overall loss-making trend being reversed looks slim. One estimate suggests that 60% of English clubs are technically insolvent at a time when broadcasting rights deals that have placed the domestic sport behind a paywall appear to have peaked and competition from countries like France, drawing top players out of the league with tax incentives, has proved challenging.
Potential approaches such as splitting broadcasting agreements or tapping into other formats, as cricket has done, might be approaches worth considering.
In addition the salary cap is still too high to aid a path to profitability. For the 2025-26 season, the Premiership has confirmed the salary cap is £6.4m, with a number of credits and exclusions, meaning that clubs can spend at least £7.8m plus an excluded player salary.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 1st June 2025. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £65,960 All bets have an ROI +2.55%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £69,960, a 1649% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 30th-31st 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 Liverpool v Arsenal.
- Cricket, the Final of the 2025 Hundred.
- Formula One, the Dutch Grand Prix.
- Golf, The Irish Open on the DP World Tour.
- Tennis, the US Open continues
2025 NFL Season
We have added the NFL 2025: 17-week regular season. Just £99 & includes three ante-post reports going live from this week.
“What to Expect” is live now, free to read here
Ante-Post part one, Team Markets is live now here
Ante-Post part two, Player Markets out Monday midday.
Subscribe here
Free Tip
The Hundred Eliminator at The Oval Saturday 6pm
Trent Rockets v Northern Superchargers
Second and third in the league table meet in Saturday’s eliminator, the winner heads to Lords for The Hundred final on Sunday where they’ll meet the Oval Invincibles looking for their third title in a row and likely to have Australian leggie Adam Zampa in their line-up replacing Rashid Khan. Zampa has played for the Invincibles in 2023 and 2024 and played a key role last year with 19 wickets at 11.5 in nine matches. Khan is required at an Afghanistan series this month, a big loss that will no doubt have both of Saturday’s teams thinking they have a shot at toppling the Hundred’s best team over several years.
Good news for this game, and probably for both teams, is that it’s at the Oval. In a tournament beset by low scores and slow, tired pitches the Oval (and Headingley) have provided the best batting surfaces including teams chasing 180 down during the league stages.
The Northern Superchargers first (with Andrew Flintoff at the coaching helm), They’ve won 10 of 15 matches with Harry Brook as captain. They're the only team that Oval Invincibles haven't beaten in the last two seasons by the way. Interesting if they make it through this game. They’ve won 5 of the 8 matches this year. I think it’s fair to say the batting line-up is key here, and probably more powerful than the bowling line-up.
Zak Crawley (that renowned Northerner from Canterbury) has 280 runs in this season’s Hundred, third behind Jordan Cox and Jos Buttler, off 172 balls at a strike rate of 162. Alongside him Dawid Malan has 182 runs off 128 balls.
The real stardust of course is provided by Harry Brook with 221 runs off only 134 balls, batting four, and a strike rate of 164. With Dan Lawrence at 3 and David Miller at 5 this is a high-powered unit.
The bowling line-up sees Durham’s Matt Potts as top wicket-taker with 9 with New Zealand’s Jacob Duffy and England A’s Tom Lawes with 8. Mitch Santner’s loss through injury has been a blow, Samit Patel has come in as the slow-bowling all-rounder.
Turning to the Trent Rockets who won on Wednesday night to get to a league record of 6-2.
Leg spinning all-rounder Rehan Ahmed is a front-runner for player of the tournament in The Hundred. He’s scored runs batting at number three, taken wickets and been a huge part of the Trent Rockets success. That, along with his 5 hundreds in the Championship should give him a good chance of being on the Ashes trip this winter. Rehan took 3-15 and scored 37 off 23 in the last league game.
At the top of the order the dasher Tom Banton opens with Joe Root and both have scored 228 runs so far at identical strike rates. Ahmed has 189 runs and they are the only three batsman with over 100 runs as the team strategy packs the team with all-rounders beginning with Willey and Stoinis at 4 and 5.
I think its definitely the case that the Rockets have a deeper bowling line-up. Lockie Ferguson, Sam Cook and David Willey supported by Marcus Stoinis is a strong experienced unit and Rehan leads all of them with 10 wickets.
Outright odds for the game are the Rockets 4/5 Superchargers 1/1 and I’d agree that the Rockets should be modest favourites.
Interesting player prop prices are:
- Rehan 5/1 top Rockets batsman (behind Root 11/4 and Banton 3/1) In a competition where top scores can come at big prices down as low as 7-8 this is rare as the market is usually a three-way go. Willey and Stoinis come next at 6/1.
- Harry Brook is 100/30 joint favourite to be Superchargers top batsman alongside Crawley with Lawrence and Malan 4/1 or below. This though is a more competitive market than the one above.
10 points Rehan Ahmed top Trent Rockets batsman at 5/1 BetVictor, 9/2 with Bet365 and Ladbrokes/Coral
What now?
At Red Bull Racing Max Verstappen sealed his fourth consecutive world title last season but it is now in a period of change with the departure of Christian Horner their team principal for all of the 405 races they competed in until he was sacked.
Laurent Mekies has moved from the sister team Racing Bull and has now been thrown in at the deep end with the future of Max Verstappen top of his inbox.
At Racing Bulls he worked in tandem with Peter Bayer, who took on the role of chief executive while Mekies was team principal. Mekies will have to do both jobs at Red Bull, at least in the short term, a tough ask for someone with no experience in the chief executive side of the role. However, the real decision-maker is Oliver Mintzlaff, the Red Bull GmbH managing director, even though much of his background is in football. Perhaps the leadership roles will ultimately be split with a Chief Exec coming in from parent Red Bull.
Yuki Tsunoda, who is particularly struggling at Red Bull, performed well under Mekies for Racing Bulls. Perhaps instilling confidence in the Japanese driver is one quick fix the Frenchman can look at.
Is there a possibility that, for the greater good of Red Bull, they may need to hit rock bottom before they can rebuild? Verstappen stays for the 2026 season with new regulations instead of a move to Mercedes and he will be driving a car with an engine expected to have a deficit, from early wind tunnel results, to their biggest rivals, and doing so with a splintered leadership team.
When Verstappen is not winning, he is unhappy. Red Bull are 288 points adrift of McLaren in the constructors’ championship and Verstappen has 69 points to make up on Oscar Piastri in the drivers’ standings.
Were Verstappen to leave, the immediate future would be bleak. Red Bull may not just be mediocre but if the dismal form of Tsunoda is more typical of what the majority of the drivers can get out of their car rather than the exceptional talent of Verstappen they could be at the back of the grid.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 1st June 2025. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £65,960 All bets have an ROI +2.55%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £69,960, a 1649% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 23rd-24th 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 Manchester City v Tottenham and Newcastle United v Liverpool.
- Cricket, the 2025 Hundred continues.
- Rugby Union, the Rugby Championship: South Africa v Australia and Argentina v New Zealand.
- Golf, The European Masters at Crans-sur-Sierre on the DP World Tour.
- Tennis, the US Open
2025 NFL Season
We have added the NFL 2025: 17 week regular season. Just £99 & includes the ante-post, part one of which will be published next Friday along with a "What to expect" report next Thursday.
Subscribe here
Free Tip
Rugby Championship Round 2 South Africa v Australia, Cape Town Saturday 4.10pm
It’s not often you get an 18-point favourite turned over in top level Rugby. At 22-5 to South Africa at half time having scored 22 points in the first twenty minutes in the Johannesburg game to open the Rugby Championship last weekend Australia were any price you like.
At half time I was called away to go to a barbeque (I mean, who arranges one of these things when there is sport on TV?) and was resigned to a losing bet. I checked the score an hour later and did a huge double take on seeing that Australia had scored 33 unanswered points from five tries in the second half to win 38-22 and win for the first time in Johannesburg since 1963. Crazy stuff.
In the first 25 minutes the Australian tight five forwards were in trouble playing at altitude but as the half wore on the back row began to win the break-down battle and scoring the first try before half time gave them a tiny foothold in the game.
South Africa then went away from their strengths in the second half and played very expansively but inaccurately and Australia were absolutely lethal on the counter-attack. Australia certainly have a tremendous backline in these circumstances, led by full-back Tom Wright whilst winger Max Jorgensen can finish from anywhere. Ikitau and Suaalii are gelling in the centres and after a wobbly start at fly half James O’Connor’s outrageous passing came off.
One factor that came into play was the South Africa have a new defense coach, installing a new system and the wide defenders were constantly left exposed and beaten one-on-one in the second half.
South Africa pride themselves on the basic metrics of the cornerstones of Test rugby – the breakdown, the aerial battle, defence and set-piece. To read that overall they achieved just 68% in the lineout, missed 26 tackles and lost the post-contact metre battle by some 70 metres (325m playing 395m from the Wallabies) was very unexpected.
Only two of the Australian tries came from less than 22 metres out, four were run in from the area between the 22 and halfway line, really unusual and a measure of how many times the hosts coughed the ball up and were in turnover.
Looking ahead to Cape Town this week. I expect South Africa to win. Certainly last week Australia were battle-hardened by three Lions tests and I’d expect South Africa to get back to basics, be more tuned up and leave the fancy stuff alone for large parts of the game. They have made 10 changes from last week notably Handre Pollard at 10 and a lock Franco Mostert at 7 which suggests a more physical approach with more of a kicking game, plus a 6-2 bench so the “bomb squad” is back. In the backs Inside centre De Allende and winger Kolbe are back too, both big boosts.
In addition Australia are injury-hit. Winger Dylan Pietsch broke his jaw and starting prop James Slipper has an Achilles injury. Captain Harry Wilson misses out too, important given how well the Australian back-row went but at least Rob Valetini is back.
For South Africa Captain Kolisi and Du Toit are out too, which is two of last week’s starting back row, but generally we’d regard the South African depth as a real strength.
South Africa were -18.5 points at kick-off last week and lost by 16. This week they go off -13.5 points. I’d love some Australia +14 an important number representing two converted tries, if you see that.
11 points Australia +13.5 points at 10/11 generally
Slow Horses.
Slow over-rates were a feature of England’s Test Series against India and an issue across all series in recent years
Only 72.3 overs were bowled on day two of the third Test at Lord's. 15 overs were lost from the match not because of rain or bad light but because of the slowness of play. A further 19 overs were lost over days three and four.
England were subsequently docked two points in the World Test Championship (WTC) and fined 10% of their match fee for a slow over-rate.They were deemed to be below the required rate despite mitigating circumstances.
The rules are as follows:
In a five-day Test, 90 overs are scheduled for each day.
To prevent teams tactically wasting time to ensure a draw, all of the overs must be bowled on the fifth day, barring interruptions for the weather. On the previous days, the overs must be fitted into the six hours of play, with an extra half hour made available at the end of the day. While time can be made up for overs lost to the weather, there is no such provision when the reason is simply slow play. If overs are not bowled in that time they are lost from the match.
There are some penalties already in place in the International Cricket Council's playing conditions but they have limited impact.
An umpire can, after an initial warning, award five penalty runs to an opposition if one team are deemed to be wasting time. This rule has never been enforced in Test cricket.
A stop clock was also introduced last month where a timer counts down from 60 seconds between overs. Again, five penalty runs can be awarded but, despite warnings during the first two Tests, neither captain was punished.
More common are fines against captains and, in the WTC league phase, points deductions.
At the end of a WTC match various caveats are taken into accounts, such as injuries and umpire reviews, and a calculation is made as to how far behind the required over-rate a team was.
The regulations state: "A team will have one point deducted from its points total for each penalty over it incurs."
England were docked 22 points during the 2023-25 cycle. Captain Ben Stokes has pointed out his team are at a disadvantage because pace bowlers, with their longer run-ups, bowl more overs in the UK than other countries where spin plays a greater part.
The number of overs bowled per hour has dropped steadily throughout the history of Test cricket, in part down to developments in the game such as umpire reviews, boundary checks, concussion protocol and TV advert breaks. Prior to World War Two the average over-rate was about 21 per hour. That dropped to 18 between 1945 and 1974, 14.3 from 1975 to 1999 and 14 since 2000.
A major factor in the recent series was the ball. Both teams have repeatedly asked for the ball to be changed because it has gone soft and out of shape. This has led to delays to allow umpires to check the shape and possibly replace the ball.
Joe Root has suggested teams should only be allowed three attempts to change the ball per innings to save some time. Others believe that fines will never work, nor docking WTC points and you have to impose penalty runs.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 1st June 2025. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £65,960 All bets have an ROI +2.55%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £69,960, a 1649% increase.
