The first place at the Vitality Blast finals day will be secured on Tuesday evening when Yorkshire play host to Sussex in the opening quarter final of the T20 competition. Limited overs attention returns to the county game but with Headingley staging the Test match this week, Yorkshire take the game to Durham to look to make it through to the semi-finals.
Yorkshire finished second in the North Group when the opening stage was played out prior to The Hundred, while Sussex came in third in the South Group but their squad will be boosted by a number of players who celebrated success in the new competition over the weekend.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Cricket channel with the build-up beginning at 6pm and the first ball sent down at 6.30pm.
Yorkshire
It wasn’t always smooth sailing for Yorkshire in the group phase of the competition but they managed to maintain enough consistency to secure a home quarter final, if you can call it that with the match having to be staged away from Headingley. Yorkshire haven’t made finals day since 2016 so they certainly won’t lack for motivation going into this match but you just wonder if the huge storm cloud hanging over the club could impact them.
The one thing Yorkshire have been this season is brutal with the bat. That is understandable with half of their matches being played at Headingley. They haven’t been as good with the ball, again some of that is down to the fact that their home matches are at Headingley, but also because they have missed a couple of bowlers and their attack has been left just a little exposed at times. They will need to bat well here if they are going to win the tournament.
Sussex
Sussex have made it through to the knockout stages of the competition once again but having lost in the quarter final in each of the last two seasons they will be eager to win this match and secure a return to finals day for the first time since they were beaten in the final by Worcestershire in 2018. Going away from home in these quarter finals isn’t usually a good thing so it might be advantageous that this is more of a neutral game, although Sussex don’t get to play T20 at Durham very often which might just be a negative.
Sussex have had players coming and going throughout the competition because of either injury, Covid-19 or England call ups so you wouldn’t expect them to have been consistent but they did enough to finish in the top four of the South Group and now they embark on knockout cricket which they have plenty of experience in. A number of their bowlers were heavily involved in The Hundred over the weekend and that could be significant.
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Team News
Yorkshire were dealt a blow on the eve of the match when news broke that Lockie Ferguson was unavailable because he is isolation due to Covid-19. Joe Root, Dawid Malan and Jonny Bairstow are all away with England but Adil Rashid is available.
Sussex have been boosted by the fact that Rashid Khan is available for this quarter final. David Wiese will be his fellow overseas player after Travis Head has returned to Australia. Ollie Robinson is away with England but Chris Jordan and Tymal Mills are in the squad.
Betting
I had Yorkshire second favourites for this match before the news broke about Lockie Ferguson on Monday and now that he is out and England have taken Dawid Malan away it is hard to go against Sussex here. The big negative is that Sussex won’t have played a T20 match at Chester-le-Street but Essex were in that position against Lancashire a couple of years ago and they won there. There is just no hiding from the strength of this Sussex bowling attack.
In essence you have the three kingpins of the Southern Brave bowling attack which just won The Hundred and the best T20 bowler in the world in Rashid Khan in this Sussex attack so it isn’t going to be easy for Yorkshire. They have some brutally big hitting batsmen in the likes of Tom Kohler-Cadmore and David Willey and the classy Harry Brook but we saw all weekend that hitting this Sussex pace trio is not an easy thing to do. Even if Yorkshire do get a score on the board their bowling attack looks very light after Willey and Rashid and that is another concern. Sussex just have too much about them here.
Tips
Back Sussex to beat Yorkshire for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Boylesports
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