The final match of the regular season in the inaugural International League T20 competition takes place on Monday when the ILT20 campaign is on the line for the Sharjah Warriors. They go up against the Gulf Giants in a must win match.
The Warriors need to win and also have a little bit of a margin to the victory else they are out of the competition. Gulf Giants know that whatever happens in this match they will be competing against the Desert Vipers in the Qualifier on Wednesday.
Sharjah Warriors
The Sharjah Warriors have already messed up one chance to all but put themselves into the final stages of the tournament when they were the only team to lose a game to the Abu Dhabi Knight Riders this season. They now know there is no wiggle room if they want to make it through. They have to win this match and make up the tiny deficit in the net run rate on the Dubai Capitals else their campaign will come to a close here.
Their batters were beginning to come to the party but they reverted to type once again on Saturday. It is quite a weird thing but this is a tram who have gone better without their England internationals than they have with them. Those internationals will need to come to the party here else the Warriors are going to be left vulnerable. They have an attack which can get the job done but they will still need support from the batters.
Gulf Giants
If you assess a season but the fewest number of defeats then the Gulf Giants have been the best team in the tournament. The fact that they have done the double over the leaders Desert Vipers would also support that claim but they won’t care about any of that if it doesn’t result in them winning the title at the end of it. They have already guaranteed themselves two goes at making the final if they need them regardless of what happens here.
This is a complete dead rubber for the Giants so it will be interesting to see whether they continue to select a strong side and keep the form and momentum that they have built up or whether they look to get some fringe players involved in case they are needed over the last few days of action. Whatever they do you would imagine they will be good with the ball but they might expose themselves with the bat if they make too many changes.
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Key Players
Tom Kohler-Cadmore has almost double the amount of runs that any other Sharjah Warriors batter has this season. You would imagine he’ll need to pile a lot more onto his collection if his side are to get over the line here.
David Wiese is becoming an important cog in the Gulf Giants wheel. He has been excellent with the ball throughout the season but his batting has been vital at times too. Another big performance from the Namibian would give the Giants every chance here.
Betting
The Sharjah Warriors are the only team to beat the Gulf Giants this season and when you consider there is nothing on this for the Giants and everything on it for the Warriors it wouldn’t be a massive surprise if history repeated itself but that is fully factored into the price where the Warriors are the favourites. They have cost me too much in this tournament to back them but I definitely wouldn’t want to be on a team who are playing for nothing.
I don’t really want to invest a huge amount on this match not least because there hasn’t been a huge amount of consistency in the wickets in Sharjah but one I can’t avoid is the 13/2 on Shimron Hetmyer to top the run scoring for Gulf Giants. He did that in the match against the Desert Vipers on Saturday when he looked in very good form and the thing I like about Hetmyer is he plays his cricket in Guyana back home where the pitches there are turgid so he can adjust if this is one of the tougher Sharjah wickets and obviously if it plays well this ground definitely isn’t big enough for him. You wouldn’t think there is much point in the Giants playing Chris Lynn here and it might be that James Vince gets the night off too given the amount of cricket he has played in the last couple of months. That might just open the door up for Hetmyer to top score, not that he needs it opening given how quickly he can catch up here.
Tips
Back S.Hetmyer Top Gulf Giants Batter for a 1/10 stake at 7.50 with Betfair
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