The second part of the Monday double header of action in the Big Bash League sees two of the teams who have offered up inconsistent starts to their season battling it out when the Brisbane Heat take on the Melbourne Stars at The Gabba.
The Heat picked up their second win of the season last time out and will be looking to add to that here. The Stars suffered woe on Christmas Eve and will be eager to start turning their campaign around in this match.
Brisbane Heat
When you consider how close the Brisbane Heat came to making the final last season, their slow start to this campaign was something of a surprise. It should be acknowledged that they haven’t been helped at all by the constant coming and going of players to the Australia squads but that is an excuse they can only use for so long to be honest. They got a good win under their belts last time out and now they have to build on that.
We had to wait a while for their batters to come to the party and they finally did that at Adelaide. There is a case to be made that there is still to come from that area of the side because they are still waiting for Chris Lynn to hit top gear. When he does you sense they’ll be fine. One area they just need to keep tabs on is their bowlers. A couple of times they have disappeared around the mid overs in the innings and that can’t keep happening.
Melbourne Stars
Another season, another year where the Melbourne Stars are showing signs of flattering to deceive. This happens a lot when a side has a multitude of superstars in its midst. They all begin to leave it to the others and then before you know it none of them are in form and a team starts to slump. We’re not there yet but I would imagine the Stars will have been devastated at the way they lost to the Hobart Hurricanes on Christmas Eve when they had enough in their side to pick up a win.
I think in the main their bowlers have done alright for them in this competition, although it was a bit of a worry at just how much they missed Adam Zampa on Christmas Eve. The issue comes with the bat. They have a lot of egos in their batting line up and maybe they could benefit from a few more brains. Whichever way you look at it, the Stars should be producing much better results than they are so they need to sort out whatever it is that is holding them back.
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Team News
The Brisbane Heat are expected to be unchanged for this match unless Australia give Mitch Swepson permission to play. With the Sydney Test just a week away you would imagine he’ll stay with the Australia setup though.
Melbourne Stars have made two changes to their squad for this match with Sam Elliott replacing Tom O’Connell in the bowling setup. More importantly, the Stars have Adam Zampa back in their ranks to give them a huge lift.
Betting
I always say when I bet on matches at The Gabba that I don’t want to go anywhere near the match outcome because unless a freak occurrence happens such as when the Brisbane Heat played the Sydney Thunder here, it is almost impossible to defend this ground. We still saw shades of that when Brisbane were rallying in that match and there are countless other examples of how hard it is to stem the tide when the chasing side get going here. The wicket is just too true for the bowlers to contain teams.
I’m going to focus on the sixes in this match as well. We saw in that match between the Heat and the Thunder here last week that the likelihood of sixes here is huge. You wouldn’t say that Sam Billings is the biggest hitter in the world, he’s certainly not at the level of power hitting that some of the players on show from the Stars are, yet he was ploughing them into the stands. The sixes line is 11.5 for this match and if Maxwell, Stoinis or Russell get going they could make mincemeat of this line. The Heat have enough six hitters of their own on show and have just belted 200 in Adelaide so I’m expecting the batting to pin their ears back and run up the sixes here.
Tips
Back Over 11.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.85 with BetVictor
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