England and Pakistan certainly didn’t disappoint in the Test series which finished last week and that has only watered the mouth ahead of a five match ODI series which begins this week. England have staged something of a turnaround in 50 over cricket recently while this has traditionally been a good format for Pakistan so we’re set for a classic series.
Schedule
1st ODI – 24 Aug at Southampton (d/n)
2nd ODI – 27 Aug at Lord’s
3rd ODI – 30 Aug at Trent Bridge (d/n)
4th ODI – 1 Sept at Headingley (d/n)
5th ODI – 4 Sept at Cardiff
England
Eoin Morgan’s men head into this series off the back of easing past Sri Lanka in their last series. This will be a much tougher test than that one was but England’s players go into the series with plenty of domestic one day cricket behind them and that will serve them well.
England’s strength in this resurgence they have shown recently has been their batting but that discipline will be tested to the full against this gun Pakistan attack but England’s bowling depth has grown to a level where they will be confident of restricting Pakistan to low totals.
Pakistan
Since that Test series against England, Pakistan have warmed up for this series with a win in Ireland in a rain affected series. That was their first win in a series since October having lost to England and New Zealand in series since then.
Pakistan’s issue coming into this series is their batting and there is no Misbah or Younis Khan to bail them out if they get into trouble unlike in the Tests. Sharjeel Khan certainly gave Pakistan plenty of reasons to be optimistic though with a magnificent century against Ireland last week.
Head to Head
These two are no strangers to each other. They have met in 16 bi-lateral series through the years with England surprisingly having much the better of it. They have won 11 of the series with Pakistan winning just three and there have been two drawn series too.
That is reflected in the matches as well where out of the 76 matches the two have played in all England have 45 wins to 29 defeats with the two matches not yielding a result. England have won the last three series between the two so may have the upper hand.
Betting
England are huge favourites to win the series which if recent history in this format is anything to go by is probably justified but the Test series certainly didn’t show either side to be significantly better than the other one. I’m tempted to back Pakistan but I do worry a bit for their batting which is just about enough to put me off.
The top batsmen markets are pretty tight here too. Alex Hales didn’t have a good Test series while Jason Roy will do well to dominate this Pakistan attack so it might be worth taking someone down the order but the value doesn’t really jump out at us. The same thing can be said for Pakistan really so I’ll focus on the bowlers.
It is the England market which interests me especially with David Willey out of the first match and I’m not convinced he comes straight back in for the second one either. If I was certain Mark Wood was going to play all five matches I would be all over him in this market as I think he is England’s best bowler by some way at the minute but just coming back from injury I’m not expecting him to play every game.
That leads me to Liam Plunkett. I mentioned in the ODI series with Sri Lanka how good Plunkett’s record is in this format recently and knowing that he is going to play all of the matches unless he gets injured he is the value for me in this series.
I always think when Plunkett bowls in this format that he has a point to prove as he wants to get back in the Test side. He bowls with pace and hostility, he’s hard to score off and he takes wickets so at 4/1 he’s my bet for this series.
Tips
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