England and Pakistan will conclude their World Cup preparations on Sunday when they take each other on in the final ODI of five at Headingley. England have already won the series but it has never really been about that over the last couple of weeks or so.
Both teams have taken advantage of the matches to look at their entire World Cup squad, as well as a few players who are hoping to force their way in late on. That approach is set to continue here with England already 3-0 up in the series.
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England
Once again we saw the strength of England in the previous match at Trent Bridge. You get the feeling that there isn’t a total possible to be scored that they can’t chase down. It wasn’t even a flawless run chase but they still made 330+ look bang ordinary. In terms of that, we’ve not really found out too much about them in terms of the upcoming World Cup because we knew this heading into the series.
What we don’t know is how England will do were they to have to post a score and then defend it. They managed to do that in Southampton but that is probably the biggest ground in the country. When they play knockout cricket in the World Cup it will be on a much smaller ground so I wonder if they will deliberately bat first here to give their players a chance to play under that pressure.
Pakistan
Although they have not had their entire World Cup squad out in this series, there must be some concerns starting to mount in the minds of the Pakistan players. This is a side who are always founded on confidence and they can’t be carrying too much of that forward having not won a match in the series to date. I would say this match is pretty important to them just for their peace of mind as much as anything.
To be fair to their batsmen they have put up three scores that would normally win them three matches but they have bowled very poorly by their standards and the less said about their fielding in the series to date the better. They need a humungous improvement with the ball and in the field and they are running out of time to find it.
Team News
England coach Trevor Bayliss had said that they would play their strongest side which would include Jonny Bairstow and Eoin Morgan, but Jason Roy is now unlikely to play due to the illness of his daughter. All eyes will be on which bowlers get selected.
Pakistan have an injury concern over Imam-ul-Haq who received a big blow to the elbow at Trent Bridge. Haris Sohail will be hoping for a recall while they are surely going to change their bowling attack which just hasn’t delivered the goods thus far.
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Betting
This has been a high scoring series so far and I’m not expecting that to change for this final match. Both batting line ups have had a superior edge on their opposing bowling attacks and there isn’t really anything that either team can do to tighten up significantly with the ball in terms of the personnel that they have at their availability for this match.
The white ball pitches at Headingley offer nothing like the sort of movement that the ones used for red ball cricket do so I don’t see any reason why the runs are not going to flow once again here. I’ve not been to Headingley since the new stand was started to be built but all the pictures I’ve seen suggest the straight boundary has come in a bit as a result of it. That will help the flow of runs so I’m happy to be on over 606.5 runs in this one.
Tips
WON – Back Over 606.5 runs for a 4/10 stake at 1.80 with Bet365
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