England and Pakistan continue to evolve their preparations for the T20 World Cup on Tuesday evening when the sides meet in the third, although what is the second, T20 match of the series down in Cardiff.
This was meant to be a four-match series to get ready for the World Cup but it is down to three after an opening washout and both teams will be hoping the rain leaves Cardiff before the off here so that they can fine tune further ahead of next week.
England
When the series did get underway in Birmingham on Saturday it was England who were comfortable winners and there was a lot to like about that performance with a thought ahead to the World Cup in mind. After batting first, England took an over or two to get going but when they did they got on top of a decent bowling attack and posted a score which while probably wasn’t as high as it might have been at one stage still looked more than good enough.
The really impressive thing was with the ball though. If England are going to retain their title then the doubts come over whether they have enough in their bowling unit but they showed in that first game that they do. Having Jofra Archer back was a huge help but it was the spin options which will have given England confidence. They even had Will Jacks up their sleeve so if the pitches do deteriorate in the Caribbean then England look in a good place.
Pakistan
You never truly know what you are going to get with Pakistan and they are going to need to show more when they get to the Caribbean than they did in the opening game against England. They started pretty well with the ball but didn’t pick up enough early wickets. Where the two teams did contrast was with the spinners where Shadab Khan just had no control at all and that is an immediate concern for Pakistan moving forward.
There is no shortage of depth to the Pakistan batting but it was apparent leading into the series that a couple of their key players were in little to no form and they didn’t exactly change that at Edgbaston. You would imagine that Pakistan will want to get those players into form before they head off for the Caribbean so we might see some changed batting orders or even personnel to get the maximum out of these games.
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Team News
England have already confirmed that Jos Buttler will miss this match for the birth of his third child which means that Moeen Ali will skipper the side. It could be that Ben Duckett comes into the middle order and everyone else moves up one.
Pakistan have no shortage of bowling options waiting in the wings with the likes of Naseem Shah and Abbas Afridi potentially the leading lights to come in should a second game in quick succession come too soon for Haris Rauf after injury.
Betting
It looks like we are going to have to dodge some rain for this match but if we do it successfully then it might be that the 45.5 boundaries line looks on the high side here. I would expect the wicket to do a bit first up with it being under cover for a lot of the day and that will make batting hard work but then when you factor in the dimensions of this ground then the bowlers have a lot more to work with here than they did at Edgbaston at the weekend.
That match only yielded 45 boundaries in good batting conditions but with England being without Jos Buttler, who contributed 11 of those boundaries, you would imagine there is an obvious downturn in the boundary hitting to come, not least if the outfield is slow with all the rain. Both bowling units are smart enough to know to bowl into the pitch and get the batters to hit to the longer square boundaries and as a result of that this line looks a few too high to me.
Tips
Back Under 45.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Bet365
