England and Ireland finish their ODI series on Tuesday when the two sides meet for the third and final time at the Ageas Bowl. The world champions have already secured the series but Ireland put up a better performance on Saturday and will hope to leave these shores with a consolation win.
We haven’t seen the high scoring fireworks that are usually attached with England matches in this format but with the pressure of the series having disappeared we might see better from teams even allowing for the fact that this match still counts towards the qualification for the next World Cup.
England
We have seen two very strong bowling and fielding efforts from England in this series and now they will be out to showcase their credentials with the bat in hand to leave the Ageas Bowl bubble feeling really good about their work for the week. Depending on your viewpoint, England have either been guilty of taking this series for granted with the bat, or they have looked terribly rusty. If it is the latter their players can at least find some form with county cricket back up and running.
England have pretty much had both the matches sewn up with the new ball and although they allowed Ireland back into the match with the bat in hand, they were never not going to reach their victory target on Saturday had they not been bowled out. Although the margin of victory was four wickets, Eoin Morgan’s men were a lot more convincing than that but they will still want to leave the series with a complete performance to silence any doubters that exist.
Ireland
The Ireland batting has been disappointing throughout this series, there is no getting away from that. They look confused about how to go about their innings. They got caught being too aggressive in the opening game and collapsed and then went nowhere in the second one and still collapsed. They need to find the balance between looking to score and rotating the strike while putting away the inevitable bad balls that are going to come their way.
To be fair to Ireland, with four of their top seven having just 10 ODIs to their name heading into the series, they clearly have an eye on the future, which with the next World Cup three years away would make absolutely perfect sense. The one positive they can take from the first two games is that if they can find some runs and put enough of them on the board, their bowlers have shown they can give the opposition something to think about.
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Team News
England will be forced into a change for this match as Reece Topley has pulled up injured. Tom Curran is likely to replace him. Liam Dawson and Liam Livingstone have waited for their chance and England might choose to give them a game here.
Ireland might wish to go in with the same side given that they were more competitive in the previous match and that their youngsters are beginning to show something. If they choose to bring a little more experience in then William Porterfield and George Dockrell are waiting in the wings.
Betting
I’ll go for a couple of bets for this final ODI and the first of them is going to be the same bet I took in the previous match, albeit at a slightly higher line. That is over 46.5 fours as opposed to the 44.5 we took in the previous game. I mentioned ahead of that match that there was so much more to come from the two sets of batsmen and in truth that remains the case going into this final game of the series as well. There were 52 fours in the last game and big hitters like Paul Stirling, Kevin O’Brien, Jason Roy and Eoin Morgan never hit a single four. This match will be played on a new strip and with no rain around recently the outfield will be quick. I expect to see another 47 fours at least here and plenty more if England happen to bat first.
The other bet I like is the 10/1 on Sam Billings to top score for England. Given that it seems that he is going to bat above Eoin Morgan the price is all wrong. Ahead of Billings you have Jason Roy who hasn’t got going in the series and as soon as he does spin will come on and restrict him, James Vince who just can’t seem to go big at this level and Tom Banton who is batting out of position. It is only really Bairstow in form above Billings and even he has failed once in the series. Billings has scores of 67* and 46* in this series, the first of which was enough to top score, and he also made an unbeaten 50 for the Lions in the Ireland warm up game. He is enjoying himself against this attack and I’ll take that to continue here.
Tips
WON – Back Over 46.5 fours for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Betfair
Back it here:
Back S.Billings Top England Batsman for a 1/10 stake at 11.00 with Coral
Back him here:
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