The compelling Test series between England and India reaches a penultimate act this week when the fourth match of the five gets underway with Old Trafford being the venue for the first chance for England to win the series.
A win here will do the job for England while India have to win in order to take the series to a decider at The Oval next week. A draw would mean India would only be able to share the series so the onus is on them to deliver here.
England
I don’t think even the biggest England fan would try to argue that their side have been the better team in this series. You could legitimately argue that they have been second best in 13 of the 15 days of Test cricket between the two so far, but at the same time they have been allowed to hang around and the one thing that has been true about this team under Ben Stokes is if you allow them a sniff at a win they will do everything they can to take it and twice they have been successful in doing so.
The England bowlers got the job done at Lord’s after they were clearly fired up by some verbals which took place during the match and if they can bowl with the same intensity here that they did in the second innings of the previous game then they will feel that they can claim the series here. We haven’t really seen England go off with the bat yet. Some of that is because India have bowled well and some might be that this team is finally maturing and using brains at times but the outfield here is usually quick which will interest them.
India
I would imagine the flip side to all that is that if you are an Indian fan you would be wondering how on earth your team is 2-1 down after largely dominating the first three matches. They should have won the first one but let multiple winning positions slip and then they had England where they wanted them after three innings at Lord’s but couldn’t complete the job when push came to shove. The task in hand for them here is to get into a similar position and be more ruthless.
The one thing India have to do is stop these collapses at the end of their innings. They did it twice at Headingley and it cost them dear and they couldn’t put any runs on at the end of the fourth innings at Lord’s. Jadeja nearly got them home but he couldn’t rely on anything at the other end so the innings needs to be managed better. They are bowling fine in the main, although they might have their resources tested here.
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Team News
England have announced their team for the match and they will make just the one change which they were forced into which sees Liam Dawson making his Test return at the expense of the injured Shoaib Bashir.
India are yet to name their starting XI for this match but they will be forced into a change with Nitish Kumar Reddy on the plane home after a knee injury ended his series prematurely. Akash Deep is also injured so Prasidh Krishna or Anshul Kamboj will replace him.
Betting
This was once the home ground of Washington Sundar so he will know the dimensions and how the wicket plays and that makes me think that the 85.5 performance line that has been slated next to his name. He hasn’t had the breakout performance in this series yet but he took four wickets in the second innings at Lord’s and the Old Trafford pitch usually does take some turn which could be significant. In the second Test at Headingley he scored 42 in the first innings so if you put the two together then he should be more than capable of reaching this line, especially when you think he would have two more innings on top. Four wickets should get the job done here but we’ll probably get a cover with three so I like the over on that performance.
Jamie Smith has delivered a winner for me and a decent run for my money in the top England first innings batter market in the last two matches and now that England have brought in a genuine top notch batter in to play at eight and kept Chris Woakes and Brydon Carse at nine and 10, there has to be a strong chance that the Surrey man challenges again at 8/1. Smith has knocks of 40, 44*, 184*, 88, 51 and eight in this series so he is scoring really well and against a weaker India attack it stands to reason that he can fill his boots once again here. I’ll pay to see how much at the price.
Tips
Back W.Sundar’s Performance – Over 85.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
Back J.Smith Top England 1st Innings Batter for a 1/10 stake at 9.00 with Boylesports
Back him here:
