England finish their tour of Australia by being the third side in a Trans-Tasman tri-series of T20 action over the next couple of weeks as the shortest form of the game get showcased on the global stage with matches taking place in Australia and New Zealand.
The three sides will face each other once in Australia followed by another round of matches in New Zealand before the two sides with the most points will do battle in the final so we have seven matches to enjoy in total.
Schedule
Game 1: Feb 3 at Sydney
Game 2: Feb 7 at Hobart
Game 3: Feb 10 at Melbourne
Game 4: Feb 13 at Wellington
Game 5: Feb 16 at Auckland
Game 6: Feb 18 at Hamilton
Final: Feb 21 at Auckland
Australia
This tournament may well have been well timed for Australia as their domestic Big Bash League is just drawing to a close so the majority of players coming into their side will be familiar with the format and used to the intricacies of it. They have selected a nice mix of seasoned international campaigners and the pick of the players from the domestic competition which suggests that even though a tour to South Africa is on the horizon they are taking this series seriously.
New Zealand
The Kiwis go into the series off the back of a T20 series loss to Pakistan but the fact they played three high intensity matches should have them nicely tuned up for this battle. Prior to the series defeat to Pakistan they were the number one ranked side in this format of the game which shows their credentials and there is no doubt that knowing how to defend the small grounds the New Zealand leg of this series will be played must be an advantage.
England
By virtue of the fact that England haven’t recently had their domestic tournament and have not had high quality warm up matches you would have to suggest England are at a disadvantage here but on the flip side of that they probably have the batting attack best suited to this competition and one or two of their players were at least in the Big Bash in the early stages. England were finalists in the last World Cup in this format which might be significant.
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Series Betting
The odds for the series are quite interesting with Australia the favourites and New Zealand the outsiders. I happen to expect England and New Zealand to be meeting in the final but I think England are overpriced here.
We’ve just seen England take a warm up side to the cleaners and they have a load of players to come back into the side yet. Australia have never really masterminded this format of the game and while I respect New Zealand’s bowling attack I do worry about their inexperienced middle order should anything happen to their openers. At 15/8 England will do for me.
Player Betting
I’ll take a couple of player bets too. In the Australia batting market Travis Head looks overpriced to me at 8/1. Head was in decent form in the one day series and has been on fire in the Big Bash lately. He will have faced the spin threats of the other two sides in the nets in their time in Adelaide which should be an advantage too and he is familiar with batting on odd shaped grounds. The power of Chris Lynn is a danger but he’s likely to go lame at some point so I’ll go with the more reliable fitness of Head.
We saw in the recent ODI series just how good the skills of Tom Curran are. He is proficient early in the innings and he has become a world class operator at the death, something that England haven’t always had. Assuming he plays the majority of the matches, and there is no reason why he wouldn’t, I would expect him to bowl at the time the cheap wickets come along so with that in mind the 4/1 on him being England’s leading wicket taker in the series looks big to me.
Tips
Back England to win Trans-Tasman Tri Series for a 3/10 stake at 2.88 with BetVictor
Back them here:
Back T.Head Top Australia Series Batsman for a 1/10 stake at 9.00 with Coral
Back T.Curran Top England Series Bowler for a 2/10 stake at 5.00 with Coral
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