Australia and England meet in the second ODI of five on Friday with the duo heading to Brisbane for what might be a pivotal match in the series. England drew first blood in Melbourne at the weekend so Australia will be desperately seeking a response here.
If England win this match they will go two up with three to play which would be a real position of strength but an Australia victory will have the series beautifully poised heading into the next match on Sunday.
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Australia
Although Australia won’t have been completely happy with their performance in the opening match, ultimately they were undone by a special knock so they shouldn’t be too downbeat. The interesting thing is that they seem to have acknowledged that they can’t do what England do with the bat and that must be something of a concern.
Clearly if Australia are going to get back into the series then their bowlers are going to have to find ways to restrict England early on in their innings but the other way to get back in is to feast on what is still a pretty ordinary bowling attack. They should have perfect conditions to do both things here so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
England
I would imagine England would be very comfortable with their performance in the first game. Having taken a bit of a towelling in the Test series the last thing they will have wanted to do was come out here and lose the opening match of this series and see their downer continue so it is to their credit that they did not let that happen.
As it was not only did they win that first game but they won it with a lot in hand so they should have drawn confidence from that. We know this is a fearless unit in this format of the game and having handled the Australian bowling as comfortably as they did I would imagine we will see them be even more expansive here.
Team News
There is a bit of a sickness bug going around the Australian set up which has accounted for Josh Hazlewood. Australia had already agreed to rest Pat Cummins so that might mean Jhye Richardson gets a debut. Tim Paine is a doubt so Alex Carey has been called up as cover.
England look set to go in unchanged which means the ridiculous ploy of playing Bairstow as an opener and everyone else out of position is going to continue. David Willey is waiting in the wings if England do change.
Brisbane Cricket Ground
There have been 77 previous ODIs on this famous ground although Australia’s record here is not as strong in this format as it is in Test cricket. They have played here 41 times with 23 wins to 14 losses with four no results. England have won eight and lost the same number of their 16 matches on this ground.
We see year in and year out in the Big Bash that this is the best batting wicket in the country. The boundaries are perfectly accessible and with that in mind the runs should flow once again.
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Betting
I’m always reluctant to back the winner of matches on this ground because it can be so difficult to defend but I have to admit England are tempting me at the prices on offer. That temptation is not quite strong enough to justify a bet though so I’ll go for the side markets for my punt here.
I like the sixes. The line is 11.5 which looks very low to me. We just saw a dozen sixes in the opening match of the series on a much bigger ground than this one at a venue not as conducive to six hitting as this one is. The ball should come onto the bat nicely here and with the power on show in both line ups I would be surprised if we don’t see another dozen sixes especially when you think the likes of Alex Hales, Eoin Morgan, Jos Buttler, David Warner and Travis Head never hit one in the first game.
Tips
Back Over 11.5 sixes for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
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