The opening match of the CPL 2023 season sees the defending champions Jamaica Tallawahs beginning their title defence against the St Lucia Kings when the new Caribbean Premier League campaign starts out in St Lucia.
The Tallawahs were good winners of the competition last season but both teams are highly fancied going into this campaign and get an immediate chance to lay something of a marker down for what is to come.
St Lucia Kings
The St Lucia Kings reached the finals of the competition last season but their campaign was ended by the Jamaica Tallawahs so there could be a bit of revenge in the air for the home side here. The Kings had made the final of the competition the two previous years so that earlier exit would have been seen as a disappointment. That leaves St Lucia as one of the sides who are still to get their hands on this trophy and that will be their primary aim this time around.
St Lucia are a rare team in this competition that look to have a nice blend of batters and bowlers. If you wanted to be critical you could argue that the batting is a little on the light side unless the truly big players step up and make sure they deliver the goods but there are so many bowling options in this team that they are unlikely to need too much in the way of big scores to be competitive in matches, so if someone in the top three does have a day out they’ll be tough to beat.
Jamaica Tallawahs
Whenever a team wins this tournament they move from being the hunters to the team that is hunted and that is no different with the Jamaica Tallawahs. The big question for the Tallawahs is whether they can compete without the title winning captain Rovman Powell, who has been recruited by the Barbados Royals. If Brandon King can get a good tune out of them then there is certainly a case to be made for Jamaica being the team to beat, one I’ve already made in my outright preview.
I think it is fair to say that Jamaica will get better the longer the tournament goes on. They have Alex Hales to join up halfway through the competition and he’ll bring a serious degree of batting power along with him. In the meantime, the Tallawahs have exceptional bowling resources and plenty of players who can provide late fireworks so if someone like King or Shamarh Brooks can inject some life into the innings at the top, Jamaica should fancy their chances here.
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Key Players
Faf du Plessis is the captain of the St Lucia Kings’ ship and I always think an overseas captain has to hit the ground running else it plays havoc with the balance of the team. Du Plessis has had a fine year in franchise cricket, something the Kings hopes continues here.
Fabian Allen has been missing out on the West Indies T20 squad in recent times but with a home World Cup slowly beginning to loom on the horizon he has the chance to remind everyone of his big hitting, canny spin bowling and exceptional fielding potential.
Betting
This is usually one of the better batting tracks in the Caribbean and as such I’m expecting to see the batters have a bit of fun in this game. This tournament advertises itself as the ‘Biggest Party in Sport’ but it wouldn’t be much of a party if the pitch stinks the place out, so I’m expecting a decent track for the players who wield the willow to really flow on. There are plenty of them so I am expecting the sixes to flow in the tournament opener.
The sixes line for this one is 14.5, which was covered in both of the meetings between these two last year even though neither were the highest scoring games in the world. The difference here is the likes of Brandon King, Johnson Charles and Roston Chase come in here off the back of a T20 series with India so they are competitively up to speed. On a good track I would expect most matches in this tournament to have at least 15 sixes and this can start us off on that journey.
Tips
Back Over 14.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.95 with BetVictor
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