The T20 series between India and Australia continues on Friday when the two sides head to Raipur to play out the penultimate game which acts as the second chance for the host team to land the spoils after they passed up their first chance earlier in the week.
Australia kept the series alive with a wonderful run chase on Tuesday and now they will be looking to force a deciding match while India will be bidding to make sure that they get the series won with a match to spare.
India
After stalling a little in the middle of their innings in the third game of the series, an incredible finish looked like it had set up a chance to go 3-0 up when they had put a daunting score on the board but it proved to be insignificant as they had no answer to the brilliance of Glenn Maxwell. Their bowling has been a bit of a concern throughout the series, although the longer their bowling effort went on in the previous game the more dew became a factor.
They ultimately paid the price for just easing up a little in those middle overs and they’ll be out to ensure that doesn’t happen again here. Reinforcements have been called for and those coming in will have the chance to push to stake their claim for a place at the World Cup next summer. Only one or two of the reinforcements would be called big names though so this is still largely a second string which will battle it out here.
Australia
It looked like it was going to be a very tame series loss for Australia when they were faced with a daunting run chase but nobody gave that script to Glenn Maxwell who delivered a wonderful innings to get them home. He probably owed his side a few runs because he bowled the last over of the Australia bowling effort and conceded 30 from it. That might have been the fault of the captain Matthew Wade who had some questionable calls when it came to his bowling selections.
In the end that didn’t matter because Maxwell delivered a brutal blitz and got enough support at the other end to get the Aussies over the line. They won’t be able to call upon another one of them in this match though as Maxwell has gone home after a period away. That means if Australia are going to force a decider they will either need some of the reinforcements to deliver with the bat or they will need their bowlers to come up with the goods.
Special Offer
Sign up for a Boylesports account and bet £10 to get up to £20 in free bets! Perfect offer for this series! Click the image below for this great offer! New accounts only. 18+ T&Cs apply. Gamble Aware.
Team News
India are expected to make changes for this match. They have brought the likes of Shreyas Iyer, Deepak Chahar and Mukesh Kumar back into their ranks for this one. Arshdeep Singh could be given a rest as could Prasidh Krishna.
Australia will be forced into changes for this one as Josh Inglis, Glenn Maxwell and Marcus Stoinis have all gone home. Josh Philippe, Ben McDermott, Ben Dwarshuis and Chris Green are among the replacements sent over.
Betting
My gut feeling is that India will win this match but they are plenty short enough. I think Australia have sent one star too many home for my liking so I like India but the dew has been a huge factor on the series so far and I don’t really want to be on them to win and then find they have to bowl second and are hampered by it. Instead I’ll head to the side markets for a bet where the total runs line is the one which catches my eye.
All six innings in this series so far have been more than 190 in terms of runs so the run line for this one of just 361.5 feels a little on the low side especially when the last two have had well over 400 runs in them. Australia have made some changes for this match but they still have a pretty powerful looking top seven while India certainly haven’t weakened their batting. This has been a high scoring series to date and I don’t see a reason for that changing here.
Tips
Back Over 361.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
