“Do you mind if I share the cricketing love?”

But perhaps the best of them is that from time to time I get some excellent ‘off the record’ advice from one of my professional betting contacts.

Now usually this advice would be highly price sensitive, so therefore unsuitable for sharing with a big audience, but the analysis I had sent through last night doesn’t fit into that category, so today I thought I’d share the love.

“IMO, Eng have best balanced team. India best on their day but need everything to go right- will probably only play 5 bowlers and have a longer than average tail, so if one or two bowlers underperform or lose early wickets they are less likely to be able to recover than most. No juice in India’s price, maybe a little with Eng’s. Aus next most likely. A few weak teams making up the numbers and SA, NZ, Bang and Sri Lanka a fair way back from the best three with Pakistan in the gap but almost always a bit unhinged.

“Format- a bit bonkers with a round robin for 10 teams, then semis and final- should mean best teams reach semis and also that the top bat/bowl markets will matter less than normal about playing for a team going to final stages due to the number of games needed to get there..

“Babar Azam (Pak) and Adil Rashid (Eng) are the stand outs for top bat/bowl.

“Zampa (Aus) another possible for top bowl as well as Cummins- as captain likely to play each game and is a selfish skipper tending to bowl himself at the best times. Bangladesh’s main man Shakib al Hasan a big price too.

“I also quite liked Dawid Malan but that was before seeing the price. At big prices, Mitchell (NZ) is a possible and Sky’s 80/1 for Travis Head (Aus) is much better than Hill’s and others’ 20/1.

“On the spreads, shock, horror, the only one I’ve spotted so far is to sell Root. He hasn’t quite got the balance of his game right in 50 overs. Has hardly played this version since the last world cup and looked out of sorts when he has, so much so that he was added to the squad to play Ireland before it was rained off (the only one in the squad to be included) in an attempt to find some form. He’s the one in Eng’s squad there on reputation rather than form.”

The tournament is now underway but it’s a long old event so the advice above all still stands. Make of it what you will but there are undoubtedly a few juicy betting nuggets included, so fingers crossed it’ll help you make a healthy profit.