The Major League Cricket season heads into Morrisville for the final time in this campaign on Wednesday when two of the bottom three in the table meet as the Seattle Orcas go up against the Los Angeles Knight Riders.
We are into the business end of the tournament now and matches are running out for these two to have an impact on the competition. You suspect whoever loses this game won’t make the postseason so this is a key match.
Seattle Orcas
The Seattle Orcas are bottom of the table heading into this match but they do have a game in hand of the two teams above them that they are chasing, although given that the Knight Riders are in fourth and a point ahead of the Orcas, a Seattle loss here would leave them three points away from fourth spot with two games left and with an inferior run rate. That isn’t a position that is favourable so you get the feeling that they need to win this game.
The initial problem for the Orcas this season was that they don’t seem to be able to pace a score when they are batting first and on the two occasions that they have done that they have come up woefully short. They did chase well the first time round but offered up an ordinary run chase in their latest game. The other thing that has been obvious is that their batters have not enjoyed batting here in Morrisville and that has to be a concern for this match.
Los Angeles Knight Riders
The Los Angeles Knight Riders are probably the biggest disappointments in this season so far and they have just two matches left to show that they are good enough to make the top four and then hope that they can do something should they get there. They will definitely need to win one match to finish in the top four but the likelihood is that they will need to win both or else they might need other results to go their way to get into the playoffs.
The season actually started off well for the Knight Riders with a solid win in their opening match but they have taken three convincing beatings since then and unless their bowling unit comes to the party soon then they are going to fade out of this competition without landing much of a blow in it. They could do with their top order starting to catch fire too and you get the feeling that it is no or never in that regard. They certainly have the players to do it.
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Key Players
Now is really the time for Heinrich Klaasen to come to the fore for the Seattle Orcas. The captain has only made double figures once in this tournament and batting in the position that he does that clearly isn’t good enough.
Jason Roy is the only player to have more than 100 runs for the Los Angeles Knight Riders this season but 69 of the 109 that he has scored came in one innings so the Knight Riders could really do with their opener coming good here.
Betting
The matches at this Morrisville ground have in the main been low scoring this season and I don’t really see why this won’t be another one of those situations because with the exception of one Ryan Rickelton innings earlier in the tournament the top orders of these two aren’t really functioning. That is generally when the runs are scored on this ground and I don’t expect that to change here because there is a heat advisory warning in place for this part of the world where the real feel temperatures are expected to be in the low-mid 40s.
That means that the life is going to die out of this pitch the longer that the match goes on and as the ball gets soft it is going to be hard to get it away, especially when there are a number of spin options in these two sides who are going to ask batters to find their own pace on the ball. The run line for this one is 309.5 which in five of the six matches on this ground would not have been covered. This is the third match in four days on this square in this heat and I just can’t see the ball coming onto the bat very well so I’ll play the under here.
Tips
Back Under 309.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
