Cricket is unpopular sport, so spamming on such a thread would be more difficult than on a football thread; football is one of the most watched sports, and there is news about it all over the media; most of these spammers without knowledge of the game just go to news pages, pick up some random headlines, and post it on the forum without any proper details; a user who watches the game will always contribute positively than someone who just reads news online. I know nothing about cricket, so I see no reason to go on a cricket thread and spin words; people should only talk about what they know best, and that's it. You made a point
I think that these who want will always find ways to spam, no matter it's football, cricket or chess thread, even if they don't know even basic rules of game. Can't speak about cricket, but I often see spammers posting their shit about sports they have no clue at all. It's basketball, hockey, olympics and so on. But yeah, there is much less spam in topics other than football, soI prefer to discuss there about less popular sports, rather than football.
BTW, there is so much discussion in Gambling discussion board about sports itself, that name of board don't even corresponds name of it.