There are another three matches at the T20 World Cup on Sunday with the first one potentially being the start of the action in Florida when Group A concludes with what is now a dead rubber between Ireland and Pakistan.
Both of these sides know that they will be going home after this match has concluded so their only real aim is to depart the scene with a victory and exit with a little bit of confidence for the cricket they have to come.
Ireland
It doesn’t need me to say that this hasn’t been a campaign that Ireland would have wanted when they set off for the Caribbean. To be fair to them, they did everything they could preparation wise. They played a series with Pakistan and a tri-nations in the lead up to the event but they just haven’t performed when they have been out here and then factor in running into the rain and it has been a couple of weeks they would rather forget.
They haven’t batted at all well in the two matches that they were able to complete and they don’t have a bowling unit good enough to win many games at this sort of level if they are not delivering the goods with the bat. To be fair to the Irish the conditions in New York were pretty rough. They will get much more favourable batting conditions here and so the task now is to deliver a convincing batting showing and prove that they are better than what they have shown so far.
Pakistan
It definitely hasn’t been the competition that Pakistan would have wanted to date but they only have themselves to blame. They were in control of their match with USA to start their campaign but let that slip in a super over and then they made an absolute mess of what should have been a fairly comfortable run chase against India in their second game. They got the better of Canada to restore some pride in their third match but the damage had already been done.
Pakistan haven’t batted well in this tournament. To be fair we shouldn’t really judge them on the ordinary batting conditions in New York but there was nothing wrong with the pitch in Dallas and they laboured through the first 10 overs and it found them out. We need to see something from their top three here to prove that they still have it at this level and if they don’t then much is going to need to change from within over the next two years before the next T20 World Cup.
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Team News
Ireland are expected to have a fully fit squad to choose from for this match with them having not played for more than a week because of the rain. It remains to be seen whether they give a game to those who haven’t had one yet.
Pakistan will probably go in with the same side that they had in the win over Canada last time out unless they want to give the two bowlers who are yet to see any game time an outing before they head home.
Betting
They had the covers off on this ground on Friday and there was talk that the pitch was good despite all the weather that has been around so assuming that has remained the case, and there wasn’t masses of rain on Saturday so you would think that it has, then I’m expecting something of a high scoring match here. This is a fairly high scoring ground historically and these two have nothing to play for so there is no reason for the batters to play defensively.
Sometimes in this tournament the underdog has been caught out by the powerful bowling unit of the opposition but it is only a month or so ago that these two sides met three times in Ireland so that isn’t going to be the case here. That series was pretty high scoring so as long as the Irish batting hasn’t lost too much in the way of confidence I think we’ll see plenty of runs here. The run line for this one is 284.5 and when you consider the lowest score in the six innings in that series was 178/7 this line looks well within reach.
Tips
Back Over 284.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Betway
