The second part of the Caribbean Premier League double header sees the leaders in the CPL 2023 table going into the day in action when the St Lucia Kings take on the current home side Barbados Royals.
The Kings have the early advantage in the table but they did get to enjoy their home leg of the competition first up. Barbados are having theirs at the minute and will be looking to make further progress within it.
Barbados Royals
After being pretty comfortably beaten in their opening match on home soil, the Barbados Royals were under pressure to perform in the second one against the champions Jamaica Tallawahs. To their credit that is exactly what they did, holding their nerve in a run chase which looked a little daunting when you consider in that first match at the Kensington Oval they had been shot out for just 61 and looked a bit of a mess.
Thankfully for the Royals, that looks to be the blip in the road rather than the regular path because they are going to need their batting. Their bowling does look the weaker of the two traits, although it might just be that they longer these grounds get used the better they will get because they have a couple of spinners who will be useful the longer the competition goes on. This is the Barbados home leg so there remains pressure on them to deliver.
St Lucia Kings
The St Lucia Kings have made an acceptable start to the season with a couple of wins from three completed matches but where they might lose ground to the rest of the field is the fact that half of their home leg of the competition was washed out. They are still in a fair position right now but they will move down to third if they lose this game and the two teams immediately below them would have a game in hand, so this is an important match for St Lucia.
With that in mind, it therefore doesn’t really help that they have lost their campaign for the remainder of the competition as Faf du Plessis has picked up an injury. He wasn’t just their captain, he was their leading run scorer and while Colin Munro is a decent replacement, he is a middle order batter so there is going to need to be some movement within the batting order. The positive for St Lucia is their plethora of spin options which could well be key here.
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Key Players
Jason Holder is the leading wicket taker in the tournament so far and he could be called into action to get Barbados up and running with the ball. There is every chance that his batting will be needed at some point too.
Roston Chase is the leading wicket taker for the St Lucia Kings which is probably unexpected but on a pitch which will be being used for the third time in the day you would imagine his spin bowling will be important. He also has the highest score of those Kings batters left in the competition so he is a key man.
Betting
If the St Lucia Kings wasn’t having to deal with a change in captain and a switch around to their batting I would have said they were the ones to be on in this match. I still don’t want to oppose them though with the amount of spin they could utilise on a wicket which has been used all day. I’ll go with a side market bet which comes in the form of a player performance line for Jason Holder, which looks quite low at 36.5.
In many ways the condition of the pitch is irrelevant for Holder when he has a line under 40 points because he has three ways of scoring and you would think that just an average day with all three will cover this line but were he to have a good day with either bat or ball you would imagine it gets covered too. Holder has covered this line in three of the four matches with the ball alone, including the reverse meeting between these two sides when he picked up four wickets. He hasn’t had that breakout innings yet but we know he can play them and he’s often fielding in the hot zones with his height. I like him to cover here.
Tips
Back J.Holder’s Performance – Over 36.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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