The T20 series between England and Australia reaches its middle match on Friday evening when the two sides cross the border into Wales to meet for the second time of the scheduled three with this match coming from Cardiff.
Australia drew first blood in Southampton on Wednesday evening and they can secure the series with a match to spare with a win here. England have to win this match to take the series to the decider in Manchester on Sunday.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Cricket channels with the build-up beginning at 6pm ahead of the 6.30pm start time.
England
While the stand-in England captain Phil Salt suggested that England weren’t too bad in the opening game, the reality was a lot different to the picture that he painted. In truth, England were nowhere near good enough in any department and while some of that has to go down to how well their opponents played, England didn’t get going at all and they are going to need a huge improvement if they are going to take this series to a decider.
England were ripped apart in the powerplay when they had the ball in hand and while some credit has to go to their death bowlers for pegging things back in the last quarter of the bowling effort, the damage looked to have already been done and that is how it proved. It was probably the batting display which will have disappointed England the most. It does have to be said that they looked a batter light to begin with but even so they would have wanted to deliver better than they did.
Australia
I wondered going into the opening match whether Australia might be inconvenienced by having their warm-up matches against a lesser side than the one that they were going to face here but that couldn’t have been less of the case if it had tried. We knew Australia were taking the series seriously by virtue of the fact that they were and played three matches with Scotland last week and they more than hit the ground running in the series opener.
There probably isn’t a great deal of natural improvement left in Australia now but there probably doesn’t need to be any improvement in them at all. If they can perform like they did in the opening match they are going to be very tough to beat. If you wanted to be picky then you could suggest they could close out their batting effort a little stronger but that aside it was such a good performance that complacency might be the only thing that can get the better of them now.
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Team News
England will surely make changes after that first match but the problem that they have is there is no guaranteed improvement with the batting to come from those who didn’t play on Wednesday. Dan Mousley for Jacob Bethell would be an obvious change but whether that improves them remains to be seen. John Turner and Brydon Carse could be eyeing a spot with Reece Topley most vulnerable after bowling just one over in the first game.
Australia probably wouldn’t have wanted to have made any changes after that opening win but it looks like they will be forced into one with fears that the tour is over for Xavier Bartlett after an injury he picked up in the first game. Riley Meredith would be the natural replacement.
Betting
Liam Livingstone had an excellent first game of the series and I see no reason why that is going to be any different here because he has a real point to prove at the minute. He is clearly a far better player than his numbers in an England T20 shirt would suggest. Some of that is down to the role he has been given in the side which hasn’t always been flattering to the numbers but also he has flattered to deceive when he has had the opportunity to deliver.
He is now batting at number four in this team which is a spot where he should be making big scores as he will have time to get himself in and catch up later a lot more than when he is batting at six and seven. That in turn should help his bowling because he’ll have more confidence and we saw that in the first game where he took three wickets and scored 37 runs. When you consider that he could clear these straight boundaries here with shanks why England won’t get another positive display from the Lancashire man. If they do then a performance line of 34.5 points should be well within reach when you consider he covered it with bat and all in the opening game.
Tips
Back L.Livingstone’s Performance – Over 37.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
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