Australia vs India – 1st ODI Tips and Betting Preview

The winter of cricket begins down under in the early hours of Friday morning UK time when two of the best ODI teams in the world meet in the first match of a three game series as Australia take on India at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

These two great cricketing nations not only meet each other but they will do so in front of a 50% full SCG as cricket begins the climb back to something resembling normality. They do so knowing that the winner of the match will go one up with two to play.

Australia

This will be the first time that Australia have been in action in ODI cricket since they were in England in September. They surprisingly won that series against the world champions 2-1 and will be looking to build on that here given that this is part of the ODI Super League. To add more context to this series there is a T20 series and Test matches to come so these three matches should be more competitive than we sometimes see this far out from a World Cup.

Sometimes at the start of a busy summer teams can ease their star names in but that isn’t the case with Australia here. The nature of bio-secure bubbles and the like mean that they have had to name a full squad so they are expected to go pretty strong in this match. We saw in the series in England that their bowling attack is the envy of most in the world so if their batsmen can put up a decent score the home side will like their chances here.

India

This will be the first time India have been in action since Covid-19 stopped the sporting landscape for so long. Their players will be used to bubbles and everything it brings after a near two-month Indian Premier League recently. That will also have got their players up to speed nicely so the tourists might feel as though they have a little bit of an advantage in that regard although being away from home for another period of time so soon after the IPL won’t be easy.

The big thing for India here is how well they bowl in these conditions. To be fair to them they have lucked out a little with the venues because the Sydney Cricket Ground is the place which probably offers a slow nature to the pitch and a bit of turn and that is generally when India thrive. You look at their batting line up and you would expect them to score runs but that will be no good if they are haemorrhaging them when they have the ball in hand.


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Team News

Despite his poor Indian Premier League campaign it looks as though the injury to Mitchell Marsh will open up a spot in the side for Glenn Maxwell. Marcus Stoinis is expected to bat in the middle order with Josh Hazlewood as the third seamer.

There is no Rohit Sharma for this series so Mayank Agarwal is expected to be the man who opens the batting alongside Shikhar Dhawan. KL Rahul will be the wicket keeper and is expected to bat in the middle order. It looks like Ravindra Jadeja will be picked to lengthen the batting a little.

Betting

I’ll open up this series with a player performance while I assess how everything is looking and things. That comes in the form of KL Rahul where his performance line of 41.5 might be a touch on the low side because he is regularly going to be in the game from a scoring possibility. He will keep wicket and on these harder Australian wickets the keeper is often in the game from the seamers and he might even get some joy through a stumping as well.

His primary role in this side is with the bat and while I wouldn’t like him if he was opening the batting and having to face the likes of Starc and Hazlewood first up, I do think there is a bit of potential for him to go big at number five. He hasn’t played an ODI in Australia yet but he has played two Test matches here and notched a ton in one of them so that is very much a positive. You would expect Rahul to be able to milk the bowling when he comes in and I like him to go beyond 41.5pts as a result.

Tips

WON – Back KL.Rahul’s Performance – Over 41.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365

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