Australia have the chance to wrap up their T20 series against Sri Lanka on Wednesday when the two sides make the trip to Brisbane for the second game of the three, as the build up to the World T20 next year continues.
Australia demolished Sri Lanka in the first match of the series in Adelaide at the weekend and will be confident of following that up but Sri Lanka have shown their mettle in this format before from a match down and will be drawing on those memories.
Australia
It is very rare that in the first match of a summer a team delivers a perfect performance but that is exactly what Australia did on Sunday. They destroyed Sri Lanka with the bat and then dominated them when they had the ball in hand and the end result of that was one of the biggest margins of victory we’ve seen in the format. If there was a criticism it would be that they didn’t bowl Sri Lanka out, but that really is clutching at straws.
The challenge for Australia now is to put up the same sort of performance in this match and if they do that you would think they will have more than enough to get over the line once again. With them hosting the World T20 next year there should be no letting up from them over the next 12 months, unless they pick a few squad players to see what they can get out of them heading into that event.
Sri Lanka
If the Sri Lankans thought they could catch Australia cold then they soon found out that was flawed thinking. They were blown away in the field and although they never had a chance when it came to batting they still put up an indifferent display with the willow. There aren’t too many positives for Sri Lanka after that display but one would be that it can’t get any worse for them and they have to put up a better showing.
The problem when a team takes such a shellacking is that they clam up and almost go defensive to make sure that it doesn’t happen again but in this format that isn’t the way to play it at all. It will therefore be interesting to see how brave Sri Lanka are here. They need to be brave because this is a high scoring ground so they are going to have to offer up something with the bat if they are to come through.
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Team News
Australia will be forced into a change because Mitchell Starc is off attending his brother’s wedding. It would appear as though Billy Stanlake will come into the side in his place with the rest of it being unchanged.
There is no way in the world that Sri Lanka are going to be unchanged here. Isuru Udana was a surprise omission from the first match but I expect that to be rectified here while Niroshan Dickwella is likely to come in as well.
Betting
It is hard to bet on the match itself until we know that the poor performance from Sri Lanka on Sunday was just a blip. With no Starc around the Sri Lankans should find the going much easier in this one but that doesn’t necessarily equate to a more competitive performance. I expect Australia to win this match but clearly they are plenty short enough as you would expect.
In the end I’m taking a player performance and it is the one which belongs to Glenn Maxwell where his line of 39.5 looks a little on the low side. He smacked 62 against Sri Lanka on Sunday in what was one of his lowest scorers against them in this format of the game. He didn’t bowl in that first match but he has that in his locker and he is a demon fielder and usually contributes with catches. This is a perfect batting wicket which should help his strongest suit so I’ll take him to cover 39.5pts.
Tips
Back G.Maxwell’s Performance – Over 39.5pts for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Betway
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