The first of four Test matches between England and Pakistan get going on Thursday when the two sides begin the series at Lord’s. There is plenty of history between the two sides on this ground both in distant and recent memories but hopefully we can talk about the cricket here.
Both teams will be eager to get off to a good start in proceedings and I’m sure this will be very competitive between two sides who are a lot more evenly matched than the odds might suggest is the case.
England
England go into the series buoyed by their cricket against Sri Lanka but this is a much tougher exercise completely. They are going to be tested to the full here but when they were tested in South Africa they stood up to the challenge and at times outplayed them. They were underdogs then though so this is slightly different.
England generally go along ok at Lord’s but they couldn’t force a win here against Sri Lanka last month and that might be a concern heading into this match. All eyes will be on their top order to see how they go against a gun bowling attack.
Pakistan
This is Pakistan’s first tour since that ill-fated one which saw the terminal demise of the careers of Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif at this level and severely disrupted one of the most promising ones in recent memory in Mohammad Amir. Hopefully we get through this game without any of those shenanigans.
If we do Pakistan certainly have the personnel to bring plenty to the party here it has to be said. They have a solid batting line up who offer good value for their wicket and a pace attack that is reminiscent of that West Indian one of days gone by in terms of pace if not quite the quality.
Team News
England are forced into two changes from that final Test match against Sri Lanka and Alastair Cook has revealed Jake Ball will make his debut in place of Jimmy Anderson who is out with a shoulder injury. Gary Ballance comes back into the side in place of the ousted Nick Compton. Ben Stokes remains out with injury.
Pakistan have named a 12 man squad for this match and Imran Khan (no not that one!) is the most likely to be left out. That means that Mohammad Amir will be joined by Rahat Ali and Wahab Riaz in the seam attack with Yasir Shah providing his wily leg spin.
Lord’s
This will be the 133rd Test match to be held at the home of cricket with England having played here on 130 occasions including last month against Sri Lanka. That match was their 49th draw but they also have 51 wins to 30 defeat here. Pakistan have played here 14 times with three wins and five losses with six draws.
The wicket here is generally good for batting and doesn’t deteriorate too much but Stuart Broad has voiced his concerns about how low and slow it could be which probably isn’t ideal for the Englishmen it must be said.
Betting
Usually I start series off quite slowly but this one feels a little bit different and I’m going to get stuck in here. I’m actually going to follow my series bets here too because at 7/2 Pakistan are just a shade too big to ignore. I’ve already highlighted all their credentials in my series preview so I’m not going to go over old ground but England’s batting could just be a little brittle in the face of this attack and so I’ll chance Pakistan.
My two main bets on the match come in the player markets and they centre around Jonny Bairstow and Wahab Riaz. Jonny Bairstow’s performance line is set at 112.5 but he smashed that in one innings against Sri Lanka last month. He loves batting at Lord’s. He has 95 against South Africa here as well and in two digs I would expect him to cover a significant chunk of that total. We know he’ll get catches though with the slope finding the edges so while that line looks high I don’t think it is high enough.
Wahab Riaz has a first innings wicket line set at 1.5 at just under evens and I like the look of that. He showed on totally dead pitches in the UAE just what he can offer and nothing else in this match is going to match him for pace so he will be well worth watching. Out in the UAE he had Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler ducking for cover in a devastating spell of bowling. Wahab won’t bowl a lot in this match but the overs he does bowl will be threatening throughout and he can bag a couple of scalps.
Finally I’ll have a little piece of Chris Woakes to top score in England’s first innings at 33/1. It is just too big. Again I highlighted the top order struggles in my series preview and England have needed their lower order to bail them out for far too long now. Statistically Woakes is going to top score or go very close at some point in this series. I’ll chance that it is here.
Tips
WON – Back Pakistan to win 1st Test for a 2/10 stake at 4.50 with William Hill
Back them here:
WON – Back J.Bairstow’s Performance – Over 112.5pts for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
Back it here:
Back W.Riaz Over 1.5 1st Inns Wickets for a 4/10 stake at 1.95 with Coral
Back it here:
Back C.Woakes Top England 1st Inns Batsman for a 1/10 stake at 34.00 with Winner Sports
Back him here:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2016
