The ODI series between England and Australia will be settled on Sunday when the two sides meet for the fifth and final time when they head to Bristol for what is a an eagerly anticipated deciding match between these two rivals.
Australia opened the series with successive wins but England have followed suit to level the series and now the spoils come down to one match and the hope that the rain stays away so that we can get a proper conclusion to battle.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Cricket channel with the build-up to the decider beginning at 10.30am ahead of the opening ball at 11am.
England
You have to give England a whole lot of credit for getting themselves back into a series which they looked like they had thrown away with a couple of crazy passages of play with the bat in the first two games. Harry Brook believed in what he was asking his side to do and made it very clear that he wasn’t going to change the message and his team have rallied around him and put in two insanely good batting displays to take the pressure off of the bowling and with it win the matches.
What I’ve liked about those two showings were the first batting effort was with their back firmly against the wall in the series and the second one was in tough conditions early on where for once they showed some smartness, rode the tough times, set the innings up and then capitalised on it at the back end of it. If they bat smartly here there is no reason why they won’t put up the sort of score which would give them every chance of claiming the series.
Australia
When they took a 2-0 lead in the series with a couple of really dominant showings, Australia could have been forgiven for thinking they would have had the series won and maybe even be looking at a whitewash by the time they got to Bristol. That certainly isn’t the case though because they have struggled to keep control of England in the last two games. You could make the argument that it was England that failed to control themselves in the opening two matches which would leave Australia with plenty of work to do.
If Australia are going to rebound and claim the series then they have to find a way to get control of this England middle order. One way to do that would be to bat first and stick plenty of scoreboard pressure on the board and see if that gets to England. The other might be to bring one of the gun bowlers back for a spell in the centre of the innings in the hope that it blows the order open. Either way, Australia will need their best if they are going to win this match.
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Team News
When you consider that England are managing the minutes of Jofra Archer in the way that they are it would be a surprise if he plays again barely 36 hours after the previous game ended. Olly Stone might return to the side in his place.
Australia played what many would consider their strongest XI in the last game and it might be that they go in unchanged here but Cameron Green would be in line for a recall if they do want to make a change because he extends the batting.
Betting
We are all set up for a cracking conclusion to the series but unfortunately there is no getting away from the forecast which suggests that heavy bursts of rain will arrive in the Gloucestershire area about 4pm. The One Day Cup final last week played out a 20 over game knowing the rain was coming later in the day but I don’t think the international rules allow for that to happen so you’ve got to think that this match will be curtailed midway through the second innings at best.
The question is whether we can use that to our advantage. There is no point in taking any of the match markets because they’ll either be voided or heavily influenced by the toss result but there is mileage in taking the top batter market on. Liam Livingstone is 6/1 to lead the England run scoring. He smashed 87 in 47 balls in the second of the T20 matches and in the last two ODI games he has hit 33* in 20 and 62* in 27 balls. While the two ODI innings were not top scoring efforts they might well have provided licence for him to go up the order and on a ground where the straight boundaries are tiny and the square ones still accessible for someone of his power it could be worth paying to see if he goes ballistic again.
Tips
Back L.Livingstone Top England Batter for a 1/10 stake at 7.00 with Bet365
