The T20 series between Australia and India continues at a pace with the middle match of the five taking place in Hobart on Sunday when the two sides meet in game three with the home side looking to secure a share of the spoils.
Australia drew first blood in game two after an opening match washout and they can go 2-0 up with two to play with a win here. If India are to have a chance of winning the series outright they have to win this match.
Australia
They might not have won that second match quite as comfortably as it looked like they could have done at the halfway point but Australia will be delighted to be in front in the series. It was well-known that they were going to lose players as the series goes on because of the main attention being The Ashes so being out in front at least means that those coming into the ranks can play without too much in the way of pressure which is a big thing when you consider how Australia like to play their T20 cricket.
Usually it is the batters who get the job done for Australia in this format of the game but it was actually the bowlers who set the win up for them in the previous match. They identified that India were struggling to hit the back of a length delivery and just used the pace and bounce in the Melbourne pitch relentlessly to keep India to a below par score. It will be interesting to see if conditions are similar here and allow them to utilise the same plan.
India
There is no doubt that India would have been disappointed with their performance with the bat in the previous match. They would have been annoyed because with their record in Melbourne they could have been considered favourites to win the match but they never adjusted to the bouncier conditions and kept losing wickets which denied them the chance to sit in, build a partnership and assess the situation before maybe launching at the back end of the innings. They will definitely need to improve in that department here.
To their credit, India almost rescued the situation with the ball, taking six Australian wickets in their defence of a paltry 125, but in the end there just wasn’t enough runs on the board. There is no issues with the India bowling attack, especially if the pitches assist the bowlers, but they are going to need to bat much better than they did in that previous game. They got their order all wrong too which was an issue which you would expect them to rectify ahead of this one.
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Team News
Australia will be forced into a change for this match because Josh Hazlewood is now done as he prepares for The Ashes. Sean Abbott is the favourite to come in for him. Glenn Maxwell returns from injury too with a first ball duck for Matt Short in the previous game making him most vulnerable to missing out.
India don’t tend to make too many changes to a team when a series is live but after messing things up in the fashion that they did with the bat in the last game they must be tempted to look at Rinku Singh and Jitesh Sharma.
Betting
When you consider that Australia hit six sixes in chasing 125 on a huge Melbourne Cricket Ground on Friday, it makes plenty of sense to back them to cover 7.5 sixes in this match. The ground in Hobart is nothing like as big as the MCG and the fact that Australia hit half a dozen sixes when they didn’t really have any scoreboard pressure on them tells us exactly how they intend to approach the remainder of the series when they have the bat in hand.
To be fair, we had seen that in recent series against South Africa and West Indies anyway so it isn’t coming as a surprise that they are going to look to be aggressive and go after the bowling. The surprise was that they were able to attack the mystery spinner in Melbourne and that bodes very well for their six hitting prowess here. When you factor in their best player of spin is back in Glenn Maxwell there is plenty of reason for thinking that Australia can cover a 7.5 sixes line here.
Tips
Back Australia – Over 7.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.85 with Betway
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