Tennis is becoming harder and harder to bet on and more frustrating day by day. As well as my usual gripe of top 'professionals' not taking many tournaments seriously you have to add to the mix that a fair few matches will be fixed anyway. I have been watching some Challenger stuff lately, and to say the appetite for the game drains from a competitor from very early on in the piece would be an understatement. You can expect it from these I suppose, but when you cannot trust a fully fledged ATP Main Tour player to give 100% every match, then alarm bells start ringing.Yesterday Janowicz decided he'd had enough after losing the first set to Verdasco (after lumping on Verdasco). Simona Halep also had a grievance, a hip injury it was first thought, and fair play to her she has had a gruelling schedule and may need to take some further time off. But I do think her match with Penetta would have been interesting. The match was into a third set and it seemed like it was poised slightly in the underdog's favour. I'm not saying for one bit that Halep bailed out, but in other circumstances athletes do, to avoid the red face of an exit. This is pathetic. And don't even get me started on Prakash Amritraj who just basically fucked off after losing the first set the other day.
Meanwhile there is going to be interest in the Wests-Warriors NRL match today as Benji Marshall laid out that he wants to leave League for Union. I'm going for a Wests +4.5er at around the 1.84 mark. This seems quite generous given that they have won their last 3 home games on the bounce (including a crushing defeat of Melbourne Storm).
I also jumped on the Australians in the 2nd Test. Currently 3.55 after Matt Prior departed, they could wrap up the innings in double quick time this morning and then hopefully bat long and big. England will then have the problem of the day four/five wicket, and if Smith can continue his glorious gift of getting England batsmen out, along with Aggar, then it could be tricky for England.
And more pitfalls of betting I'm afraid, this time with Utrecht losing to Differdange of Luxemburg. Every man and his dog bet on Utrecht in some form or another. I went in for BTTS which flew in, with Differdange actually winning the game 2-1 on the night. See the article below for a LOL at ONE tipster.....this was genuine lolz stuff and proves that one punters view is different from another. I saw this as Differdange failing to score just once at home in the calendar year 2013, whereas he gave them no chance to score...and probably did lay in the end.