The Metro Bank One Day Cup returns from a random day off on Thursday and it does so with three matches, each of which take place in Group A as a few teams get their campaign underway and others continue theirs.
Just in case you missed the beginning of this competition, The Hundred has the TV coverage so if you have a bet on any of the matches either on Thursday or beyond and want to watch the progress of it you need the county live streams.
Essex vs Nottinghamshire
One of the three matches comes from Chelmsford where the Vitality Blast finalists Essex go up against Nottinghamshire with the home side looking to get off the mark after a no result on Tuesday while the away side get their campaign underway.
These are two of the teams who have lost a number of players to The Hundred but at the same time they are teams who have plenty of depth to their squads and good academies to bring quality talent through so even though plenty of first choice players won’t be playing here, this should still be a decent game. I suspect that playing a match, albeit one which was curtailed by rain, will serve Essex well whereas although they had a warm-up match Nottinghamshire are coming in competitively cold here. I wouldn’t necessarily put anyone off of taking Essex but with both bowling attacks looking fairly weak and the batting very much the strength I wouldn’t be surprised if the chasing team holds the edge so I’ll personally hang fire until we know the outcome of the toss.
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Surrey vs Leicestershire
Another match on Thursday comes from The Oval where two teams begin their Metro Bank One Day Cup campaign when the Championship leaders Surrey go up against Leicestershire who are go well in their own red ball division.
That bodes well for a good match here and I don’t think we’ll be disappointed. These are actually two of the stronger batting teams in the competition on paper. Surrey have added Rory Burns and Ben Foakes to their squad for the competition and already had the likes of Dom Sibley and Ben Geddes around. Man for man you can make a case for Leicestershire having the strongest top six in the competition. Rishi Patel has been one of the players of the season in Championship cricket and Sol Budinger is nicely suited to this format of the game then Lewis Hill, Colin Ackermann, Wiaan Mulder and Peter Handscomb are a top level middle order and Louis Kimber is no mug at seven. Where Leicestershire might struggle is with the ball though where Chris Wright aside they look very ordinary and so I would imagine the Foxes will be involved in some high scoring matches this season. We saw in the Test match earlier in the week that the pitches at The Oval are good for batting and with that strip largely towards the middle of the square, if this is on a different wicket we might have a short boundary somewhere. While Surrey have a couple of recognisable bowlers their attack isn’t as strong as it might be so over 545.5 runs will do me here.
Yorkshire vs Lancashire
The other match under normal circumstances would be the one which gets the most attention as Yorkshire take on Lancashire in the final Roses match of the season unless the pair both make it through to the final.
Yorkshire started their tournament with a loss on Tuesday and will be looking to bounce back straight away while Lancashire had their opening game washed out after six overs of the second innings, so while they are a point better off, they won’t want to come away from a second match without a win. They might not have a lot of a choice though as because there isn’t much rain in the forecast for the scheduled time of play on Thursday, there are flood warnings in place for this part of the country from the amount of rain which came down on Wednesday so the ground at Scarborough where Yorkshire are staging this game might not be fit for action without the drainage that a Headingley might have. When you add to the mix that these two teams are decimated by The Hundred call ups it is a pretty easy one to leave alone.
Tips
Back Surrey vs Leicestershire – Over 545.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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