The Global Super League continues with the first day game of the tournament on Saturday when Hampshire look to build on their opening win when they go up against the Pakistan representatives Lahore Qalandars.
Hampshire pulled off something of a heist in their opening match of the competition but they have a platform to build on. Lahore went down a little too tamely for my liking and probably have to win this to stay alive in the event.
Hampshire
Hampshire are in rarified territory in recent times in that they have opened a competition with a win. Usually they are very poor starters to a tournament and come good as their team settles into a groove. They will be hoping that trend continues because if it does then they are going to be hard to stop in the race for the final. Were Hampshire to win here, they would only need to beat Victoria in their final game of the group phase to land themselves in the final.
There is no doubt that there is a lot more to come from Hampshire with the bat. Their top order really struggled to impose themselves in the match against the Rangpur Riders but there is no shortage of talent in their line up so they need those players to come to the party. You have to say that their bowling already looks like it is primed for the conditions that they are going to experience for the remainder of the event.
Lahore Qalandars
The Lahore Qalandars arrived at the tournament with plenty of questions to answer. They were largely down to the fact that they had an ordinary campaign in the Pakistan Super League and were without a lot of their key players from that event in the squad for this one. You would have to say that it showed in their match against the Guyana Amazon Warriors but the Caribbean men might be the benchmark in the competition so maybe it is fairer to judge them here.
The Qalandars did look like they were getting into a position where they could put up a total which would have been more than competitive in that first match but they made a right mess of the last three overs with the bat and while they plugged away with the ball, it never looked like they had the amount of runs that they needed against that particular opposition. They will be looking at their lower order to bat a little smarter and ensure they get to the sort of score that they need.
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Key Players
James Fuller was probably the hero of the piece for Hampshire in the opening game. He got a few hits away to carry the score up to a more competitive total and then his four overs with the ball were in the pressure moments and he came up with the goods.
Tom Abell top scored for the Qalandars in their opening match and he will know this bowling attack well having faced it plenty of times in the Vitality Blast for Somerset so the England man will be a big player for the Pakistan outfit here.
Betting
I’m not expecting a particularly high scoring match here I have to say. To be fair, the pitch they used on Friday night, which I assume which will be the same one being used here, seemed to play a lot better than the first one but some of that might be down to the fact that the Victoria bowling unit probably weren’t suited to the conditions and the Guyana batters had the power to take advantage. I’m not sure there is much in the way of brute force with the bat here.
The other thing to consider in this match is this is a day game so there isn’t going to be any dew involved and under the sun the pitch will dry out further as the game goes on. Both teams have a number of spinners in their ranks and you would imagine Hampshire will bring Benny Howell in for his cutters in this match so I expect the ball to be on top of the bat here and if it is then a run line of 279.5 feels like it is going to be out of reach.
Tips
Back Under 279.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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