Tony Bloom is talking about the best bet he ever had. Not the biggest, not the most lucrative. The one that gave him most pleasure. It’s 1996, long before Starlizard, syndicates and data analytic, long before he bought Brighton & Hove Albion, and long, long before he was arguably the most admired owner in English football. Back then Bloom was simply a professional gambler who had previously worked in accountancy with Ernst & Young.
And he had spotted something. Before the 1996 Cricket World Cup, Bloom had noticed that the limited-overs game had changed and that the country best set up to take advantage of it was one of the hosts, and the eventual winners, Sri Lanka.
“You know how it goes in sport,” he
