The last of the three T20 World Cup matches on a busy Sunday in the tournament takes us back to St Lucia for the second time as Group D of the competition comes to a close when the Netherlands go up against Sri Lanka.
The Netherlands still have a chance to make it through to the super eights but need Bangladesh to lose the other game on Sunday night and a pretty sizable net run rate swing in order to progress. Sri Lanka go home after this one.
Netherlands
When the Netherlands won their opening match against Nepal at the beginning of this competition they raised hopes that they could make it into the next stage of the tournament. It was always going to get harder from there with three full member nations to play but they had South Africa where they wanted them in the second game, only to let them off the hook and they couldn’t quite keep control of Bangladesh in their third match so now it is all or nothing for them.
The Dutch destiny isn’t in their own hands but were Nepal to win the other game they are only looking for a win here and a swing in the range of 53 runs across the two matches to progress so all definitely isn’t lost just yet. If they are going to do their part of the equation they are going to need to bat a lot better than they have done to date but this will be the best batting track that they will have batted on so there is a chance that could happen.
Sri Lanka
This certainly hasn’t been the tournament that Sri Lanka would have wanted or expected. I don’t think too many thought they were genuine contenders to win the event but in these conditions the bare minimum that would have been expected of them was to reach the super eights but the truth is they haven’t even run it close. They go into their final game off the back of two pretty tame losses and a washout and will surely want to go home with some sort of positive performance.
Like a lot of teams in this tournament, Sri Lanka have batted abjectly in their two matches so far and we know they are so much better than that. They have one last chance to remind everyone what they can do in that department. I don’t think they have necessarily bowled badly in their two outings but at no stage did they have enough runs on the board and paid the price both times. Sri Lanka have a perfect white ball record over the Dutch which they would want to maintain here.
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Team News
The Netherlands chose to pick an extra bowler over batting depth in their last match and that move certainly didn’t work so we might see a seamer pay the price here for the addition of another batting. Vivian Kingma was expensive in the loss to Bangladesh and could pay the price.
Sri Lanka might choose to give game time to those who haven’t had it in this competition but whatever they do with their side you would imagine they will pack it with another out and out batter to give them more depth.
Betting
In a way this isn’t an easy game to bet on because the landscape of it could change over the course of the night depending on what is happening in the other game. If Bangladesh are in trouble then the Dutch will have every chance of getting out of this group but if Nepal are surrendering then the heads of the Netherlands players could well go down. That makes me hedge my bets a little bit but there is one bet which has to be taken here.
That comes in the form of the player performance of Wanindu Hasaranga. We saw in the last match for the Netherlands that they are terrible players of spin and the Bangladesh leg spinner picked up three wickets in his spell, while Mahmudullah picked up another. These two have met in the last two T20 World Cup tournaments and on each occasion Hasaranga has picked up three wickets. He is one of the best leg spinners in the world and I expect him to fill his boots here. As captain he has gone up the order a couple of times in this tournament and while he hasn’t scored a run that will change soon. He is also fielding in key positions so when you put it all together it isn’t hard to think that he will cover 44.5 points.
Tips
Back W.Hasaranga’s Performance – Over 44.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
