The Big Bash League moves into Geelong for the first time this season on Wednesday when the Melbourne Renegades take a home game to Kardinia Park when they take on the Brisbane Heat for the second time this season.
The Renegades have already beaten the Heat this season and will be keen to complete their domination over them. They will maintain their 100% record with a win here while the Heat will be looking to get off the mark for their campaign.
Melbourne Renegades
The Melbourne Renegades have made an excellent start to the season with two pretty emphatic wins from their opening two matches. Time will be the judge in what they have beaten so far having only come out on top against the Brisbane Heat and the Sydney Thunder who have won win in five matches between them, but when you consider where they were at the end of last season, which was a third consecutive one at the bottom of the table, this start is both welcome but also surprising.
The clear improvement with the Renegades has come with the bat. They continually flattered to deceive over the last season or two in that regard although to their credit they blooded what they thought were a couple of special youngsters and are beginning to reap the reward for that. They clearly went out to recruit some international bowlers who could get the job done for them as well and we have seen that move pay off as well.
Brisbane Heat
This is just the second game of a very quiet start to the new season for the Brisbane Heat. With the Test match at The Gabba last week they were always going to begin the tournament slowly when you consider some teams have played four matches already. That first game was against the Renegades and since then they have had six days between games so they could be forgiven for thinking their season hasn’t really got going yet.
Even so, they will know they are one of just two sides who haven’t got a point to their name this season and they will be eager to put that right as quickly as possible. If that is going to happen then we need to see a lot more from their batters than we did in the opening game because they have recruited overseas batters to pile on the runs for them. That has left their bowling a little exposed and we saw that in the first game so those batters have to come to the party.
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Key Players
Nic Maddinson has started the season like a house on fire. It is always good when a captain in this format is still delivering in the facet of his game that he is in the team for. The fact that Maddinson is doing it at the top of the order is so much the better.
Given the dimensions of this ground Colin Munro could be an important man for the Brisbane Heat. He is excellent at accessing the square boundaries and they are as short as anything at Kardinia Park so his innings is going to be important to the outcome of the match.
Betting
There were a dozen sixes when these two teams met at a bigger ground in Cairns than what this Kardinia Park one is, the square boundaries in particular. This ground was used in the initial part of the T20 World Cup a couple of months ago and although the pitches were absolute dogs of what we wanted and expected, they were right at the beginning of the summer where the weather was very cool and wet. That hasn’t been the case in Geelong recently so I’m going to take a chance that the pitches play much better here.
If we do get the sort of pitch I expect then the square boundaries are going to get peppered here. The majority of the sixes when these two met in Cairns were square of the wicket or cow corner and while I would imagine the bowlers will go a touch fuller here with the straighter boundaries a lot longer but both teams have men who are adept at sweeping seamers or using the crease to manipulate the ball where they want to. The sixes line is 9.5 for this one and if we do get that good standard of wicket that will be covered fairly easily.
Tips
Back Over 9.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.95 with BetVictor
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