ENGEL ON cricket betting? There are those who will tell you that, in the list of useful guides, this is bound to rank alongside Devon Malcolm on Batting and Julian Clary on Rugby League.

My record as a cricketing punter over the years has been, well, patchy. But I have had my moments. I believe the principles on which I bet are very sound ones. It is just that my judgement is inclined to be erratic.

The first and most important principle is the ethical one. Is it right to bet on cricket? Not in every case. Is it sensible? Ditto. Is it fun? Yes.

Cricket offers punters a huge variety of great betting opportunities. In moderation, it can enhance people's enjoyment of the game enormously. For that to happen it is necessary to understand something of what cricket betting is all about.

Fair or foul?

Luckily, cricket is such a good game that it survived and thrived even without bookmaking. You can be sure betting still went on. But gambling on cricket remained hidden under a layer of Victorian morality/hypocrisy until the late 1970s, when Ladbrokes were allowed to open betting tents on English Test grounds.

The betting situation in the subcontinent and the Gulf may now resemble pre-1817 England: it is illegal, uncontrolled and, if persistent rumours are even quarter-correct, threatening the whole fabric of cricket. The gamblers are helped by the absurd international fixture list, with all its meaningless made-for-TV matches, which are ripe for rigging. Uncontrolled betting may well be not merely the biggest scandal cricket faces, but the biggest it has ever faced.

And this could threaten the gentle and pleasurable betting scene that has reached maturity in England over the past 20 years and is starting to develop, as old laws relax, elsewhere in the cricket world.

There have been outrages here too: I remain shocked that Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh were never touched for betting against Australia at Headingley in 1981, for successfully backing England at 500 to 1 when they were apparently down and out. Their behaviour would now be a clear breach of the ICC Code of Conduct. It was brazenly immoral then. (Incidentally, the money Ladbrokes lost by offering that famous price was recouped a thousand times in publicity.)

on the spot: session betting is available in the tent at home Tests

It's common knowledge that whenever you get gambling, you get corruption Steve Smith-Eccles jockey

The one victim has been Younis Ahmed: sacked by Worcestershire for betting against his own county in a Sunday League match, but the money involved was so tiny it failed even to cover his own win bonus.

That sort of thing is characteristic of cricket betting in Britain. The amounts of money are small, representing a modest (but growing) percentage of bookmakers' turnover: about nine per cent of the non-racing take. And British bookies take calculated business risks, not wild punts. They have checks and controls. Any unusual betting pattern involving enough money to justify rigging a match would be picked up very rapidly. The main trouble with modern British bookmakers is not that they are corrupt, but that they are too damn windy.

The beauty of it

Sports betting generally is growing in popularity against traditional betting on horses and dogs. For very good reasons. You can study horse-racing form for hours but the bookmakers will always have better and more up-to-date information coming out of racing stables than an ordinary punter. But in cricket, your guess is as good as mine, and as good as a bookmaker's. You have to judge the teams, the conditions, the weather and everything else. But, provided the players have not been corrupted, there are hardly any secrets. The information is there for anyone who picks up a newspaper or switches on the telly.

How to bet

That still leaves two other obstacles. One is the fact that the bookmaker is in business to make a profit, and sets his prices accordingly. And the other is the government, who demand their cut in the form of betting tax.

A simple example: bookmakers treat a one day cricket match as a two-horse race (since a tie is regarded as dead-heat and a wash-out would be void). If you had gone into the betting tent at the B&H final and found that Essex were even money, Leicestershire would have been even money as well – they would be odds-on. This is the bookmaker's profit margin. By careful adjustment of the prices according to the flow of money, the skilful bookmaker can usually ensure that he makes a profit whatever the result. And even the bitterest punter has to admit that he has got to pay his staff and his overhands.

The Government's cut is charged at nine per cent on a telephone bet or in a betting shop, zero on a racecourse. On a cricket ground there is a six per cent deduction which covers costs, not tax, and sounds fishy to me. Best to find a bookmaker at Ascot to take a bet on Lord's.

So if you bet at random over a long period of time, you would end up losing an average of about 30 per cent of all the money you staked: the bookmakers' profit plus the tax. To do better than that, you have to be a little bit shrewd.

To make an actual profit over a long period, you have to be very shrewd indeed. I don't know whether anyone does this, since Jack Bannister only tells me about his successful bets. Anyone that clever shouldn't be wasting their time betting on cricket: they should be making millions in the City, where the odds are more favourable.

I think punters should treat their bets as a bit of fun and interest: a way of spicing up the day. As a Northamptonshire man, I was not that bothered whether Essex or Leicestershire won the B&H. With a bet, the day takes on a new dimension. And the punter becomes a participant. You are pitting your skill and judgement against the bookmaker, just as the batsman is pitting his skill and judgement against the

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