The Big Bash League continues with just the one match on Friday when two sides who haven’t made the desired start to their season meet when the Adelaide Strikers welcome the Hobart Hurricanes to the Adelaide Oval.
Both teams have just one win to their name so far although the Hurricanes have played one less match so they are in a better position of the two. Defeat here won’t be terminal for whoever loses but it will see them fall further off the pace.
Adelaide Strikers
The Adelaide Strikers made the playoffs last season but they haven’t picked up where they left off this term because they have won one and lost two of their opening three matches and will need to find a groove at some point soon if they want to emulate what they did a year ago. They shouldn’t worry too much yet because they were floundering in previous campaign before they caught fire down the home straight when their key players returned from international duty to extend their season.
The Strikers have made it pretty clear that if it is up it is off when they have the bat in hand and while that is a respectable approach to take from an entertainment point of view, they need to be cut some slack when it goes wrong, which at times it inevitably will do. The other thing the Strikers have done this season is set out with an intention to offer up a spin dominant bowling unit. It remains to be seen whether that will be a profitable strategy or not.
Hobart Hurricanes
The Hobart Hurricanes are still in the slightly earlier stage of their season and having picked up a win in their last match they aren’t in quite the same amount of pressure to win here that the Adelaide Strikers are. Nevertheless, if they are able to come out on top here then they will be building a platform from which to launch in a season which has all the hallmarks of no standout side and the potential for everyone to beat everyone with the exception of the Melbourne Stars.
The Hurricanes still look unbalanced as a side but they are going to be a very tough team to beat when one of their individual hitters comes off, as we saw in the previous match when Mitch Owen won the game on his own. Hobart do have a solid bowling unit which excels at the death, the latter of which not many teams in this competition can say, so if they can find a couple of players to get them the required amount of runs then they could be dangerous.
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Key Players
Matt Short hasn’t really delivered to the levels he would have wanted to so far in this competition. The Adelaide captain will be out to show something special particularly with the bat in this match but also the ball.
Mitch Owen announced himself to the world with a quite brilliant century in the Hobart Hurricanes last match and he will now have the task of showing he wasn’t a one-hit wonder and that he can back up that showing.
Betting
These two sides have not hidden how they plan to go about things this season. They are going to look to smack everything that they can out of the park and I certainly don’t expect to see anything different in this match I have to say. We know the dimensions of the Adelaide Oval allow for the ball to fly and while the Hobart bowling attack is useful enough, the natural length of a couple of them could sit up to be carted in this one so I’m very much looking at the sixes here.
The line for this one is 11.5 which is getting towards the higher end of where I would be comfortable betting in this competition but things like the power surge and these short square boundaries make me think there is still some juice in this line, especially when we know that everything will be going big given the chance. There is no shortage of batting power in these two sides so barring something daft I think we’ll see a dozen sixes here.
Tips
Back Over 11.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Boylesports
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