JAIPUR: Guess who are the bookies’ hot favourite in the Indian Premier League (IPL)? You don’t have to try too hard. With five wins on the trot, Shane Warne’s boys — who started off as the underdogs — are the favourite in betting circles, both in India and the UK.A day before Team Jaipur take on Mumbai Indians, desi bookies and one leading British betting agency, William Hill, are already tipping them to win IPL, while another British agency, Ladbrokes, is backing them to top the league tables.

Ladbrokes has not yet offered odds on who will ultimately win the IPL this year, but it is taking bets on which team will top the league. It is offering 11/4 on Team Jaipur, which means that for every rupee you bet on Warne and his men, you will win Rs 2.75 (you also get your rupee back). For the second spot, it is offering 7/2 on both Delhi Daredevils and Team Mohali, which means you win Rs 3.50 for every rupee you bet.William Hill is offering the same odds on Team Jaipur as Ladbrokes and is also picking Punjab and Delhi jointly for the second spot, but with slightly lower odds (10/3), which means you can win Rs 3.33 for every rupee you bet. The difference is that William Hill is talking about winning the IPL, not topping the league.

Indian bookies have a somewhat different take: they are placing equal odds on both Team Jaipur and Team Mohali to win. You could pocket Rs 3.70 for every rupee you bet on either Team Jaipur or Team Mohali to win the IPL on June 1. They have placed Delhi Daredevils in the third place.Team Chennai, which started off as one the favourites because of Twenty20 World Cup winning captain MS Dhoni, is fourth on everyone’s rate-card. They are behind Jaipur, Delhi and Mohali because they lost back-to-back matches.

Another factor that has affected their standing is the absence of Australians Matthew Hayden and Mike Hussey from the batting line-up. Lack of depth in their bowling department is another reason that has contributed to the lukewarm response of the bookies. Shah Rukh Khan’s team — Kolkata Knight Riders — is fifth on the list. With Shoaib Akhtar joining the Knight Riders, skipper Sourav Ganguly may hope the sky is the limit, but the bookies seem to believe it will take something special for this team to get into the top four.

The three worst teams so far —Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore — are, not surprisingly, at the bottom of all three lists. The odds are, of course, likely to keep changing as fresh results come in.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com