Trent Bridge stages the first ODI of three in the series between England and India on Thursday and if recent matches at the Nottingham venue are anything to go by those who have tickets could be in for quite some treat.
This has suddenly become one of the highest scoring grounds in the country ad with two phenomenal batting line ups on show we should be expecting another tough day in the dirt for the bowlers.
England
The English absolutely love it on this ground. In the last two completed matches here they have run up scores of 444/3 and 481/6 and you get the feeling it is only a matter of time before they compile a score in the 500 region on this ground. Whether they can do that against this attack remains to be seen but it will happen soon.
Those knocks with the bat have been pretty incredible but actually what will have pleased England equally as much in those matches will be the fact that they kept their opponents below 300 which even with scoreboard pressure is no easy thing to do these days. We should expect England to go on the attack with bat and ball here as they look to pick the nation up after the agonising football defeat on Wednesday evening.
India
I wouldn’t expect India to shy away from attacking this wonderful ground either. They certainly didn’t wilt under scoreboard pressure in the first and third T20 matches and a beautiful batting wicket with short boundaries and a scorched outfield should have their classy batting line up frothing at the mouth to get stuck in.
How the Indian bowlers will cope is a different story. England can be fearless on this ground and the dimensions of it are slightly strange but if India are to go one up with two to play then you get the feeling their bowlers will need to find a way to make meaningful contributions and not just their spinners either.
Team News
England have to decide who Ben Stokes comes back in for. Amazingly it seems as though it will be Alex Hales despite his unbelievable century here against Australia last month. Mark Wood could come into the bowling attack too.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar is said to be rated as a doubt for the match as he has not trained since being ruled out of the final T20 on Sunday. Siddarth Kaul is expected to play if Kumar doesn’t. Suresh Raina and Dinesh Karthik look to be playing for one position.
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Betting
I’m not going to go too crazy in this opening match because we don’t totally know how both sides are going to line up but whoever plays and whichever order they are put into I think the one thing we can guarantee on this ground is a barrel load of runs.
That seems to be the staple diet here at the minute, whether it is international cricket or domestic cricket so I’m expecting the boundaries to flow. On the face of it a 71.5 boundaries line looks very much on the high side but when you consider of the last four matches the boundaries totals have been 93, 55, 94 and 84 I’m not so sure it is high enough when the likelihood of these two classy batting line ups going big is factored in. I’m still happy to take the over here.
Tips
Back Over 71.5 boundaries for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
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