After a surprisingly one-sided ODI series, England and Pakistan resume battle on Friday evening in the first of three T20 internationals as the attention turns towards the preparation for the upcoming World T20 tournament.
Trent Bridge will stage this opening T20 match where both sides know that a win will take them one up with two to play in the series although really their primary aim will be to continue to get everything in place for the World T20.
England
Although they are not always as strong in this format of the game as they are the ODI one, England will have taken a lot of confidence from the fact that their second string eased to victory over Pakistan in the ODI series. They have their bigger guns available for this series after the isolation issues have been served so they will feel that this is another series they can win, even if they do choose to rotate the longer the three matches go on.
England know they have the batting depth to beat any side in the world regardless of which personnel are available to them but in this format they sometimes struggle to impose themselves on matches with the ball. They have been much better at that since they have utilised out and out pace in the middle of the innings to be fair, but that strategy might not be available to them when they get to the UAE so they need to come up with other plans here.
Pakistan
There wasn’t really much for Pakistan to take out of that ODI series. I’ll cut them a little bit of slack because they didn’t have much in the way of preparation time initially but they were well beaten in all three matches so a huge improvement is going to be needed here. I think they are better suited to this format than they are the 50 over one which should bring about some improvement, but whether they have enough in them remains to be seen.
It almost goes without saying that Pakistan are going to have to bat well in this match if they are to have a chance of coming out on top in it. With that in mind, perhaps the one thing they can take out of the ODI series was the return to form of their captain Babar Azam. He is statistically the best player in the world in this format of the game so that helps. If they can bowl tight and try and restrict this England batting they would have a good chance if they bat well.
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Team News
England will bring back all their major players who weren’t available for the ODI series which means that the likes of Jason Roy, Jos Buttler, Eoin Morgan and Adil Rashid are all here. Saqib Mahmood could keep his place after impressing in the 50 over matches.
Pakistan are going to be without Hasan Ali for this match as a precaution after he picked up an injury in the last ODI. That should give the exciting Mohammad Hasnain the chance to impress. Usman Qadir is likely to come into the side as well.
Betting
Amazingly this is the first T20 international on this ground for nine years so in that regard we don’t have much to go on in the way of history. There have been a bunch of matches here in the T20 Blast but a lot of those came in the rainy spell that went over the UK. Before that rain arrived though there was a match in which both teams scored 200+ and that might be the best indication of what to expect here in terms of heavy run scoring.
The run line for this match is up at 337.5 which is a little higher than I like to take I must admit, although with the boundaries fairly short here at Trent Bridge and a flat pitch under warm sunny skies I do think there is just about enough in that line to play the over. I don’t usually like going over sort of 330 as a lot of the time that eliminates a team losing by a few runs but we only need each team to get 170 here which is par for the course a lot of the time. England’s batsmen have been shown there is nothing to fear in this Pakistan attack but England aren’t always tight with the ball in this format. I like the over.
Tips
Back Over 337.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Betway
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