There is one more match in the Vitality Blast on Wednesday where a spot in the top four of the North Group is up for grabs at the Riverside when Durham look to continue their momentum against the Leicestershire Foxes.
These two have already met this season when Durham came out on top last week and they will be looking to do the double over Leicestershire and move above them into the top four. A Foxes win will distance themselves from the pack for a bit. Once again it is the live stream provided by the Durham setup if you want to watch this.
Durham
It was a very slow start to the competition for Durham with them losing their opening two matches and offering absolutely nothing with the bat. That immediately made them rethink their plans and having hoped to give David Bedingham a rest ahead of the Championship matches later in the month, he had to come into the middle order and since his class shored things up they have looked a whole lot better and come away with successive wins.
In those two matches they have chased down 177 and posted 194 so suddenly their batting has come to the party and if that unit continues to deliver then Durham are likely to go very well for the rest of the competition because they have a decent enough bowling unit, even allowing for the suspension of Brydon Carse. They have a couple of good spinners, which remains important at this level, an overseas bowler if selected and some top quality seamers.
Leicestershire
Leicestershire got their campaign off to an excellent start when they did a real job on Yorkshire in their first game but they came up short against Derbyshire and Durham in their next two before getting over the line against Worcestershire last time out to be one of the four teams sat on four points, although their run rate is good enough to have them sat in fourth ahead of this game. Should they win the match they would go top of the table so they have a huge incentive to avenge their loss to Durham last week.
If there is a concern for Leicestershire then it would probably be that their bowling has conceded 170 and more in their last three matches. That isn’t necessarily a high score in modern T20 but with all the weather around impacting the pitches they don’t need their batters to be chasing those kinds of scores all season. To be fair, they have plenty of batting depth and some really good players so their batting shouldn’t be written off.
Special Offer
Open a new Sporting Index account and bet £10 on the county season (min odds 1/2) to get £20 in free bets (2x£10 free bets) to use on any sports market! Click the image below to take advantage of this great offer! 18+ T&Cs apply. Gamble Responsibly.
Key Players
With Ashton Turner and Ben Dwarshuis as overseas players for this competition the plan probably wasn’t to play David Bedingham but that soon had to change and since he came into the side he has scored 43 and 63 to add to four successive Championship tons leading into the event. He is huge for this Durham side.
Rishi Patel is the leading scorer for Leicestershire in this tournament but he is yet to reach 50 in a match. They will be keen for him to start converting his starts into big scores to lead the Foxes upwards of 190 and above.
Betting
Durham were my pick for the North Group before a ball was bowled this season and while they have had to deal with some injuries and suspensions since I posted that prediction, they look like they are coming to the boil nicely now and even at 8/11 I think they can win this match. They have already beaten Leicestershire this season so they will head into this match with the confidence that they can get the job done against them and I never think that is a bad thing.
I think Durham have a bit of an advantage at home too because their ground is so much bigger than anything else in the North Group so you need to play differently here. Where I like Durham over Leicestershire is with the ball. No Durham main bowler is going for more than 8.13 an over this season whereas with Leicestershire of the four bowlers who have bowled in all four matches only Rehan Ahmed is going at less than 8.75 per over. I don’t think there is a huge amount between the two sets of batters so that slight edge Durham have with the ball can lead them to a second win over Leicestershire in the space of a week.
Tips
Back Durham to beat Leicestershire for a 3/10 stake at 1.73 with Boylesports
Back them here:
