How to bet on cricket on Polymarket: match winner, toss, and team props

Polymarket reported $158.6 million in moneyline volume on the IPL's 75 matches in 2026, 49.4% of the cricket total, counting each share at its $1 settlement value. The other 2,144 matches split the rest. An IPL match averaged $2.1 million. The 1,695 matches outside the ten biggest competitions averaged $34,019.

Polymarket lists each match as an event named for the two teams, "T20 Asia Cup, Women: India vs Sri Lanka", with a moneyline that pays $1 a share on the team declared the winner. Some matches add who wins the toss, whether the match reaches a result, and which team has the top batter or hits the most sixes.

Outside the big leagues a cricket price can rest on very little money, and the next section shows those matches also end without a winner more often. Check the competition before you trust the number.

A cricket moneyline paid 50-50 on 123 of 2,115 settled matches in 2026, about one in 17, and more than twice as often outside the ten biggest competitions as inside them. Each share pays 50¢, so a favorite bought at 80¢ loses 30¢ a share when a match ends with no result.

The moneyline settles on the finalized result from ESPNcricinfo. A result by the DLS method, over-rate penalties, a forfeit or a walkover counts as an ordinary win. A tie goes to the competition's tiebreak, a Super Over most often, and pays 50-50 only if the playing conditions have none or none is used.

A postponed match stays open until it is played. A match canceled, abandoned or finished with no winner declared pays 50-50, and a rained-off T20 with no result is the common case. The 70 multi-day matches of 2026 were listed another way, a Yes/No market on each team and one on the draw, so a drawn match pays the draw market's Yes.

The team that won the toss won the match 51.9% of the time across 1,633 matches in 2026, with an interval from 49.5% to 54.3% that includes a coin flip. The toss is not a reason to move a moneyline price.

Toss winner is its own market per team, settled on the coin toss whatever happens after it. Toss match double pays a team's side only if that team wins both the toss and the match; a split, one team taking the toss and the other the match, resolves to Draw.

The completed match market asks whether the match produces an official result, and it said Yes on 1,852 of 1,975 matches, 93.8%. It pays Yes on any result under the playing conditions, DLS, a Super Over and a forfeit included, and No on an abandonment, a No Result or a cancellation. On a T20 under a bad forecast, the No side is a bet on the weather and nothing else.

The team that won the match also had the top batter 75.8% of the time and hit the most sixes 62.8% of the time. These props mostly restate the moneyline: if you hold the match winner, buying the same team's top batter doubles a bet you already have.

Most sixes ends level far more often, 14.2% of matches against 1.8% for the top score, and a level result settles either market as a Draw.

Both are team markets, not bets on a named player. Top batter pays the team whose player made the match's highest individual score. Most sixes pays the team that hit more sixes off the bat; extras, overthrows and Super Over sixes do not count. Both settle on the recorded statistics even in a shortened match, and as a Draw when none were recorded.

Large cricket traders bet the moneyline and almost nothing else: 5,991 of the 6,003 large buys from April 2 to September 11, 2026 went on a moneyline, $129.6 million of $129.9 million. The props are listed widely and almost nobody trades them; a team-top-batter market drew $115 in reported volume on average over a whole match.

Read a cricket prop's price as one trader's guess until its volume says otherwise. The moneyline is the only cricket market with a crowd behind it.

Cricket sits on the other side of the favorite-longshot bias from MMA. Buyers of cricket favorites at 70¢ or more paid 85.1¢ on average and won 89.7% of the time, 4.59 points ahead of the price, across 2,893 large buys from April 2 to September 11, 2026. No sport with 1,000 or more such buys in the calibration study beat its price by more, and MMA favorites, in the UFC guide, ran 18.73 points short.

That is not free money. It says strong cricket favorites were priced a little short over one season, most of it T20 cricket, not that every short-priced team is cheap.

89.5% of large cricket buys landed after the first ball, 5,371 of 6,003 from April 2 to September 11, 2026, the highest in-play share of any sport 0xinsider tracks. Tennis and MMA come next, near 74%.

In-play buyers paid 69.0¢ on average and came out 2.69 points ahead of the price, and the 632 pre-match buyers came out 2.04 behind. The 4.73-point gap between them has an interval from -0.63 to +10.08 points, resampling 230 matches, so it sits inside the noise.

Before the first ball, the book is thin. On October 11 the median cricket moneyline book for matches in the next 36 hours sat 3¢ wide, and 8 of the 10 read could not fill a $10,000 buy. Size down, or rest a limit order and wait.

Graded as each buy was placed, wallets graded S, A or B came out +6.93 points against the price on 117 large cricket buys from June 1 to September 14, 2026, and D and F wallets -0.69 on 123. The S, A and B interval runs from -2.71 to +16.57, so there is no edge here you could copy.

Those buys came from 25 S, A or B wallets, well under the 500 buys per cohort the sharp-money study asks of a sport before it reports one on its own. Corrected October 7, 2026: this section first printed +5.86 and -2.99, from grades 0xinsider wrote after the buys.

Until more matches settle, treat a grade on a cricket buy as a name, not a signal.

A cricket match drew $27,654 in moneyline volume on average in September, against $440,358 in April, when the IPL was on. The board carried four times as many matches in September as in February, 393 to 96, and most of them are thin, so check a match's volume before you treat its price as the crowd's.

The cricket board lists live and upcoming matches with an open Polymarket market, live first; it is not a full fixture list. A card shows both teams' prices with the 24-hour move, the match state once play starts, and under Details the volume and the top five holders on each side with their grades.

A card's profitable-wallets band says how many profitable wallets hold the match and how much they have on it, with the side they back in green. It runs 4 hours late with an account and 12 hours late signed out. With Pro, the event page lists every market family with its volume and a Top holders card of ten wallets per side.

The large-trade feed recorded only 10 large cricket buys from September 20 to October 10, so on most matches the holders say more than the feed.