The Oval Invincibles are already into The Hundred final on Sunday and on Saturday evening they will find out who they will play when the Manchester Originals take on the Southern Brave in the Eliminator at The Oval.
The Manchester Originals had a fairly comfortable passage into this match while the Southern Brave had to win their last game to make it in and it will be interesting to see if that is beneficial to the inaugural champions or not.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Cricket and Sky Sports Mix channels with the build-up beginning at 5.30pm ahead of the 6pm start time.
Manchester Originals
The Manchester Originals lost their last match in the regular season, to the Southern Brave as it would turn out, but it is tough to judge them too much on that effort because the table was such that they only needed to avoid a huge defeat to make it through to this match and with the rain that was around at Old Trafford is was easy to play for what they needed rather than being all out to win the match knowing they had this game three days later.
If we judge the Originals on what they showed earlier in the season then we know that they are a deep batting unit, who haven’t really fired as one yet but who have had a number of individual innings which have got them up to competitive scores. If there is a concern it would come in the fact that their bowling has weakened the longer the competition has gone on due to either injuries or international call ups but they do get Josh Little back for this one.
Southern Brave
There are certainly vibes of the first season of The Hundred where the Southern Brave are concerned. They started that campaign slowly but picked up speed the longer it went on and eventually were too hot to handle in the latter stages of proceedings and went on to win the title. They will be hoping that the history of 2021 repeats itself over the next two days as they go about reclaiming their crown.
The big thing for the Brave has been that they have been able to keep their key bowlers fit and firing for much of the season. They have an attack which has excellent balance to it and which has quality in all three stages of the bowling innings. I think it is fair to say their batting wasn’t going great guns in the early part of the season but the longer we have gone on they have started to get more of a tune out of those they need it from and suddenly Southern Brave look formidable again.
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Key Players
Jos Buttler batted through the majority of the innings against the Southern Brave on Wednesday but was unable to get away from them. The Manchester Originals need their captain to break out a little in this one.
Chris Jordan has just been called up as a replacement for the England T20 squad and on what is his home county ground he could be a key player for the Southern Brave with the ball in particular but potentially with the bat too.
Betting
The two winners of this particular match in the first two seasons of this competition meet in this Eliminator and I think the Southern Brave are going to be hard to beat in this game. The Originals don’t have positive memories of The Oval after being shot out for 92 there earlier in the season and they have just lost to the Southern Brave so I think it is fair to say that the finalists of last term have something to prove in this one.
Southern Brave did take some time to get going but they have an attack that is well suited to the conditions and if there is turn on offer, which at The Oval at this time of the year there usually is, then Mitchell Santner and Rehan Ahmed are going to be hard to get away. If there is no turn and the wicket is flat then the change ups and quality death bowling of Chris Jordan and Tymal Mills will be important. I think Manchester can only win in a high scoring match but they’ll do well to take this Brave attack for plenty. I’ll go with Southern Brave in this one.
Tips
Back Southern Brave to beat Manchester Originals for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with William Hill
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