After what actually turned into a competitive and entertaining T20 series, India and Sri Lanka gear up for the longer version of the white ball game when they begin a three-match set of ODIs in Guwahati on Tuesday.
India got over the line in the T20 matches but I would imagine it is this part of the tour which will carry more significance for the two teams given that we are only nine months away from the 50 World Cup. Here is a chance to begin preparations for that event.
India
Often in recent times we have seen India chopping and changing the personnel that they are using in order to keep everyone fit and fresh and manage workloads. They used a backup squad for the T20 matches last week but the big guns who are available to them have been restored to the setup for these games, which shows how much more important they are to the Indians than the T20 games were, such is the way the year is scheduled.
India have a few issues to solve in their ODI side so it is a positive for them that they have this series and another one against New Zealand which follows it. One of the issues is their middle order where they are hugely powerful in the T20 format but not quite so in the 50 over one. The other thing they need to sort out is the right combination with the ball. That cost them back in England four years ago and they need to find that between now and the World Cup.
Sri Lanka
If you go back 20 years or so we were used to Sri Lanka being one of the best teams in the world in this format of the game. They were regularly either winning World Cup events or going deep in them but that hasn’t been the case in the last two. There are signs that they are turning the corner in both forms of white ball cricket though. They are Asia Cup champions in the 20 over game and have won six of the last 10 completed ODIs.
It has to be said that some of those matches were against Zimbabwe and Afghanistan but they also beat Australia and that is definitely no mean feat. We saw in the T20s last week that they are showing much more confidence these days but they are similar to India in that right now too many of their best T20 specialists are only showing it in that format and not in the 50 over game. If one or two can bring their skills to this match we saw in the T20s that Sri Lanka can be dangerous.
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 will recall the likes of Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul and Virat Kohli for this series but they will not have Jasprit Bumrah as planned. He is being saved for more recovery. Suryakumar Yadav is battling for a place but Rishabh Pant will not be around after his recent car accident.
Sri Lanka are going to be without their kingpin seamer Dushmantha Chameera once again which means that Kasun Rajitha could well continue to spearhead the attack. Avishka Fernando played the final T20 with this series in mind.
Betting
We don’t have a huge amount of international action at Guwahati to go by but two of the three matches that have been completed here suggest it is a massively high scoring ground and I always think when India take matches to the suburbs that the pitch and everything else is going to be great so that would correlate with that thinking. There was a T20 here in 2017 where India only made 118 but in an ODI West Indies had 322/8 chased down with the better part of eight overs to spare and 237 was only just enough for India in a T20 with South Africa in October of last year.
That makes me think we are going to see plenty of runs here and the recent T20 series makes me think that too. The first innings score in the last two games were over 200 so the batters seem to have the wood on the bowlers at the minute. The boundaries line for this one is at 60.5 which is teetering towards the higher end of a line I would take an over on but when you consider that ODI between India and West Indies had 88 boundaries in it and that T20 a couple of months ago had 65 in it, that line is more than reachable for two pretty deep batting units.
Tips
Back Over 60.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
Back it here:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2023
