A wonderful Major League Cricket 2024 season comes to a close on Sunday night when the top two meet in the final in Dallas when the Washington Freedom take on the San Francisco Unicorns for the title.
Neither of these teams have won this tournament before so one of them will be getting their hands on the trophy for the first time after this final. They have been by far the best teams in the competition so we are guaranteed a worthy champion regardless of who wins.
Washington Freedom
The Washington Freedom were the best team in the regular set of matches and then they showed everyone why that was the case when they cruised past their opponents here in the Qualifier 1 match to progress through to the final at the first time of asking and give themselves the maximum preparation time for this final. A repeat of that showing will make them incredibly hard to beat but they will need to play well as what has gone before means little now.
The Freedom can lay claim to having the best bowling attack in the competition this season and if that unit can turn up and deliver the goods once more then they are going to put their side in with every chance of winning this final. The Washington top order have been brutal for my of the competition and if they perform once more than the Freedom will surely go on and win the title for the first time in their short history.
San Francisco Unicorns
The San Francisco Unicorns have had to go the slightly longer way around to make it through to this final but they have navigated the path and now they are one win away from glory. They would have been expected to be competing in this tournament at this stage of the campaign when they made the marquee signing of Pat Cummins and despite passing up the first chance to make the final, they came good when they really needed to in the Qualifier 2 to set up a shot at the Freedom.
There have been the odd time this season where their bowling has just looked a little frayed at the edges and that is a concern heading into this final but if that bowling unit can show the best version of itself then we know that they have enough to get the job done with the bat, even allowing for the fact that Matt Short who was in such good form earlier in the season, has now departed for The Hundred. While San Francisco lost to Washington in Qualifier 1, they did beat them in the regular season so they know they can do it.
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Key Players
Glenn Maxwell had been going well with the ball throughout the competition but he finally came to the party against the Unicorns in Qualifier 1 and if he has a night out in this final then Washington have to be ahead of the game given the pace he scores.
Finn Allen carried the San Francisco Unicorns up to 200 in Qualifier 2 with a wonderful century and if he can get his side off to a fast start here it might pile enough pressure on the Washington Freedom to get them to crack.
Betting
Those who have followed me in throughout this competition will be sitting pretty heading into this final because we have a betting slip with Washington Freedom to win this match at 13/2 in our hands. I haven’t seen any reason why we need to rip that up now, although the Lockie Ferguson injury is a slight concern, and so I’m going to let that ride and avoid betting on the match outcome once again. Instead I’ll go to the side markets for a bet.
The sixes have been pretty good to me the longer the competition has gone on and having taken over 13.5 sixes when these two met in Qualifier 1 the other night and seeing it covered with a fair bit in hand and plenty of batting to come, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t take the same line in this final. I don’t see either team changing from their aggressive batting approach now and so we can expect both teams to target the boundaries. There were 18 sixes in that previous meeting and I fancy at least 14 here.
Tips
Back Over 13.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with William Hill
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