The T20 series between India and Bangladesh continues on Wednesday when the two sides head to Delhi for what is the middle match of the three and the first of two opportunities for the world champions to claim the spoils.
India took the opening match of the series in fairly emphatic fashion and can claim it with a match to spare if they can come out on top here. Bangladesh will be aiming to force a decider at the weekend and in order for that to happen they need to win this match.
India
Given that it was the first match that India had played since they won the T20 World Cup back in June and when you factor in that they made a large number of changes to their side from the one which won in Barbados, I would imagine they will be pretty pleased with their showing in the opening game of the series. There was always going some natural improvement in the side as they bed into their roles and get back to the rhythm of T20 cricket so to win by seven wickets with almost half of their batting innings still to play will be of great comfort to them.
The match was set up for the Indians with the ball. They had Bangladesh two down inside the first 13 balls and from there they didn’t let up. They were able to pick up wickets throughout the innings and never let Bangladesh get into the match and in the end they kept them to a total which never looked like being competitive. That was how it played out with India chasing down 128 with 49 balls to spare. There is probably more to come from that batting department as well which bodes well.
Bangladesh
After a T20 World Cup campaign that was better than many expected it to be, there were hopes that Bangladesh could offer up a competitive showing in this series. They might still do that but they have to perform an awful lot better than they did in the opening game. There were some players in the side who weren’t around for the Test matches so they will improve naturally having had the run out but the big problem were the fears going into the series came to life in that first game.
The big fear was that the Bangladesh batting wouldn’t stand up to the scrutiny it was going to face, particularly now that Shakib Al Hasan has retired from this format of the game, and nothing in that opening game suggested that they could cope. That needs to be a whole lot better here. It is harsh to judge the bowling because they didn’t have anything like enough runs to defend but they will be wanting a bit more control from the seamers if they can possibly get it.
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Team News
India named what you could call an IPL select squad for this series so you would think they would want to give a chance to as many players as possible so Tilak Varma and Harshit Rana could come in should that be the case.
Bangladesh really need to get a better platform set at the top of the order so they might consider bringing Tanzid Hasan into the opening berth at the expense of Parvez Hossain Emon. Teams are reluctant to panic these days though so an unchanged side could be named.
Betting
From a spectating point of view I hope that Bangladesh are a lot more competitive in this match but from a betting standpoint I’m going to exclude them from my bet here because it is the India boundaries line which could be the best bet. They hit 22 of them in the pursuit of 128 in the opening game and only batted for 71 balls so pretty much every third ball went to the boundary. I don’t expect that to be the case here but given that there should be a lot more to come I’m surprised the line is only 22.5 here.
If India bat first in this match then we’ve seen they can have their own way with this bowling attack and on a Delhi track where eight out of the 10 innings in the IPL earlier in the year surpassed 200 you’ve got to think this Indian side will be going way past 200 when you consider that they were going at nearly 11 an over in the previous match. If Bangladesh bat first the obvious stumbling point would be that they get skittled but surely they’ll bat better than they did in the opening game now that they have faced this attack so I’ve got to think that we are looking at somewhere in the 150 ball park as a minimum score for Bangladesh which would give India long enough to get the job done based on the way that they play. On this ground, however the game plays out this line doesn’t look overly high.
Tips
Back India – Over 22.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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