The second part of the double header in the Major League Cricket competition on Saturday night sees the Washington Freedom back in action when they face the Seattle Orcas, who get their MLC 2025 campaign underway here.
The Freedom were absolutely battered in their opening match and will be hoping for much better here. Seattle stunk the place out in this tournament last season and will want to show they have much more to offer this time around.
Seattle Orcas
The Seattle Orcas were the worst team in the competition by a distance a season ago and they will have to be pretty bad not to offer up an improvement on that over the course of this campaign. If there is a positive for the Orcas from a year ago, it is that they wouldn’t have needed to search too deep to see where it went wrong for them. In the seven matches that they played last term, only once did they post a score of more than 155 and you don’t win games in these competitions without putting runs on the board.
That will be the task in hand for the Orcas. They have lost the services of Quinton de Kock and Ryan Rickelton since last season but David Warner and Kyle Mayers make for good opening options and Shimron Hetmyer and Sikandar Raza offer good middle order power. The Orcas do look like they have a better bowling attack this time around, which in theory should take some heat off their batters but you sense that they need to get off to a good start to convince themselves that these changes will work.
Washington Freedom
The Washington Freedom came back down to earth after the title celebrating season of last term with a huge bump in their opening game. They were blown out of the park from start to finish by the San Francisco Unicorns and it goes without saying that they will be looking to deliver a much stronger showing in this match. The margin of that loss was such that they know if they are going to progress deep in the competition and put up a successful title defence they are going to need to win more matches than the rest because their net run rate is already shot to pieces.
The Freedom are certainly going to have to bowl better here than they did in the opening game. I guess in many ways that was the biggest surprise. They were dominant with the ball a season ago and in the first game here they got smashed all around California. To be fair to them, they had a good crack with the bat, especially in the early stages of the run chase, but ultimately the scoreboard pressure proved too much and they faded away tamely.
Special Offer
Open a new Sporting Index account and bet £10 on Major League Cricket (min odds 1/2) to get £20 in free bets (2x£10 free bets) to use on any sports market! Click the image below to take advantage of this great offer! 18+ T&Cs apply. Gamble Responsibly.
Key Players
Heinrich Klaasen really didn’t impress in the Seattle Orcas colours last season but now that he has given up international cricket he will need to maintain his franchise importance. He can start that with a big showing here.
Glenn Maxwell is going to need to rally his troops and get them in a good state of mind for this match but he can help out with his performance as well. If he can get a couple of big shots away and deliver the innings we know he can it will help.
Betting
This is another match where there are no shortage of hitters on show and with that in mind I see no reason why the sixes aren’t going to flow again here. We haven’t seen much turn on the two drop in pitches at all so far and if that continues in this match then you would imagine that the big hitters on show will just line up the bowling and get after it. The Washington Freedom bowlers can’t be looking forward to bowling on this ground again after the clouting they took their opening game and that could lead to sixes coming frequently.
Both these teams bat pretty deep which means that the batters can have a real good go at the bowling without too much downside during the powerplay and it wouldn’t be a surprise if carnage ensues once again. There were 40 sixes in that first Washington match the other day, which the Freedom hit 12 of and if they are near that total again you would expect the likes of David Warner, Kyle Mayers, Heinrich Klaasen, Sikandar Raza and friends to get us to the 20 sixes we need here.
Tips
Back Over 19.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Coral
