Sri Lanka end their brief tour of Australia on Friday morning when the two sides battle it out for the third and last time as the T20 series concludes at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in front of what should be a decent enough crowd.
Australia have already won the series with two of the biggest wins this format has seen in a good while but both teams will still be eager to win this final game as their preparations for the World T20 next year are fully underway.
Australia
It is very rare after two matches in a series or in this case a summer that a side has nothing much to work on but that is the case with Australia. They will need to keep their pedal to the metal though because Pakistan are in the country and they should offer a much stiffer challenge than the one they have received in this series so if they let complacency come into play they could find the next week or so quite tough.
It has been a while since we have seen the full power of Australia with the bat in this format of the game but it bodes well for them moving forward that we have seen it. If they keep up that rate then we know they have the bowling resources to be dangerous any time they are on the field. This might be a chance for them to try out a few different combinations in a match that carries little in the way of significance.
Sri Lanka
It has definitely been a tour to forget for Sri Lanka thus far and to be fair to them I guess it was always going to be that. I say that because obviously they are up against a motivated opposition who man for man look comfortably better than them but also because it can’t be easy to go down to Australia for just three T20 matches and nothing else. That is pretty unique and I would imagine motivation could be hard to find.
Nevertheless though, you would expect professional pride to have ensured that they put in better displays than what they have done. It is all well and good to be beaten by the better team but the performances Sri Lanka have put in have been very disappointing indeed. They have one last chance to show what they can do and leave Australia with something approaching some confidence ahead of their return there next year.
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Team News
Australia will be without Glenn Maxwell for this match as he is taking some time away from the game to get his mental health sorted out. Ben McDermott is expected to replace him in the side. Australia could decide to look at their bowling options.
Sri Lanka made three changes ahead of the previous match and that clearly didn’t work so it will be interesting to see which way they go. It might pay to get Niroshan Dickwella up the top of the order and give him the licence to go for it.
Betting
I’m not going to get massively involved in this match because it is a dead rubber in the grand scheme of things, but I wonder if there is the chance that Australia will give their lower order batsmen a hit out in the middle to get them some time with the bat in hand ahead of the Pakistan series which follows hot on the heels of this one.
The likes of Ben McDermott, Alex Carey and Ashton Agar haven’t even made the crease just yet while Ashton Turner has only been out there for one ball. If Australia do go down that route then it could be that Carey gets sent up to open the batting, a job he has done for Adelaide Strikers quite regularly. Warner can’t be in any better form so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense sending him out again. It is all guesswork but if Australia are going to switch things up it will be here so I’ll take a chance Carey goes up the order in which case the 14/1 on him top scoring will look pretty big.
Tips
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