Cricket markets change with the format
The same two teams are priced differently over five days and over twenty overs, and the reason is not form. It is how much variance each format allows.
Put the same two sides on a field twice, once for five days and once for three hours, and the market prices them very differently. The stronger team is a much shorter price over five days. Nothing about their strength changed.
Length converts skill into result
A longer format gives a better side more opportunities to be better. Over five days, a team with a superior bowling attack gets twenty wickets to prove it. Over twenty overs they might get six, and a single innings from one batter can outweigh everything the attack does.
So format length is, in pricing terms, a dial on how much of the result is signal and how much is variance. Test cricket is the highest signal format in the sport, which is why favourites there are short and why an upset is a genuine surprise rather than a Tuesday.
The outcome most models forget
Test markets have three results and one of them is the draw, which in some conditions is the most likely of the three. A model that prices only the two wins and normalises will be systematically wrong on every rain-affected match and every flat pitch in the fourth innings.
This is the same failure as pricing a football market without the draw, and the same fix: model the full distribution and read every market off it, as a tennis point model does.
Conditions are a bigger input than form
Overhead conditions, pitch preparation, the age of the ball and the time of day all move a cricket price more than recent results do. A side that lost three away matches on seaming pitches is not the same side at home on a flat one, and a model reading only results cannot see the difference.
What this does not tell you
Cricket data is thinner than football data by an order of magnitude, and conditions are recorded badly where they are recorded at all. Any confident cricket number is either using information the public data does not contain or is overstating what it knows.
Common questions
Why are T20 prices closer together than Test prices?
Because a shorter format gives the stronger side less time to express their advantage, so more of the result is decided by variance and the prices compress toward even money.
Does the toss matter in cricket betting?
In some conditions substantially. On a pitch that deteriorates or under lights that assist swing, winning the toss is worth a real and pricable amount.
Is the draw a real outcome in Test markets?
Yes, and it is often the most likely one. A Test market that prices only two results is a market that has ignored weather and time.