There is one place left at the Vitality Blast finals day next month and it will be filled on Friday night when the last quarter final takes place as Kent host the Birmingham Bears at Canterbury, on what looks like an excellent evening for cricket.
Kent secured home advantage in this quarter final courtesy of winning the South Group while Birmingham Bears snuck in on the final day when they saw off Northamptonshire and will be eyeing up a place at their own party.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Cricket channels once the coverage from the Test match finishes. The first ball will be bowled at 7pm.
Kent
When you consider that at one stage Kent had their whole first team isolating because of Covid-19, to top the South Group is no mean feat. We have already seen the strength of the South Group with the first three quarter final winners all coming from that section so for Kent to top it shows they must have played some excellent cricket. What made it even better is they saw precious little of their captain and arguably best player Sam Billings as he was touring the country with England.
When you think of Kent and Canterbury you would expect them to win matches with their batting. They have some of the best one day players in the country but they only passed 170 once in their last eight matches so their bowlers have been delivering the goods for them. That is also a surprise when you consider that their key overseas player Adam Milne was reduced to just three matches due to quarantine and injury issues. If the batting turns up here Kent have every chance.
Birmingham Bears
The season for the Birmingham Bears was one of three different spells. They opened up the season with four wins and a washout from their first six matches but then Covid-19 and injuries began to hit them very hard and they then won just one of their next six. That meant they needed to win their last two matches to reach the quarter final and thankfully for them they got enough players back at the right time and were able to do the business.
Had Birmingham been untouched with injuries then you would imagine they would have finished a lot further up the North Group table, so although they were the weakest qualifiers from that section that was probably a false position and they will look to show that here. They will need to get off to a good start with the bat in this quarter final because if there is a weakness to this Bears outfit then it may come along in their batting depth. If they do start well they’ll be hard to stop.
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Team News
Kent are at full strength for this quarter final with Zak Crawley no longer on England duty and Sam Billings back in place. Just as importantly Adam Milne and Qais Ahmad are both available to provide quality to the bowling attack.
The Birmingham Bears have been boosted in the team news department too with key players Adam Hose and Chris Woakes both back in the squad. The new kids on the block are both in too in Chris Benjamin and Jake Lintott but Carlos Brathwaite has left for the Caribbean Premier League.
Betting
I’m expecting another compelling quarter final here. I would actually give the Birmingham Bears the edge here because this Kent batting unit haven’t had much time in the middle recently. Daniel Bell-Dummond barely played in the second part of The Hundred while Zak Crawley has been watching England. Joe Denly, Sam Billings and Alex Blake all played in The Hundred but to no huge effect unlike the likes of Chris Benjamin for the Birmingham Bears. The rest of the Birmingham batting have been active in the Royal London One Day Cup so that could be significant. I’m on the Bears outright though so I don’t really need to take them to win this one. I’ll go with a side market bet however.
That comes in the form of the under 38.5 boundaries line. I expect a good pitch but it is more the form of the batsmen and the bowlers they will come up against which might well keep the boundaries down. Birmingham aren’t going to get a lot of joy out of Adam Milne up front and then the likes of Qais Ahmad and James Logan can squeeze in the middle overs. Birmingham have a couple of spinners who are hard to score off as well and as I’ve mentioned there aren’t many of these Kent batsmen in fantastic nick. I think the match will fall a little short of this boundaries expectation.
Tips
Back Under 38.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
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