New Zealand have the first of two chances to win the ODI series against Bangladesh on Saturday when the two sides meet once again. The match in Christchurch begins on Friday evening for those of us who are in the UK and a win for the home side will land them the series.
Bangladesh will know they have to win this match in order to keep the series alive heading to Dunedin next week and they have shown they are capable of performing well, so this second game is nicely poised.
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New Zealand
New Zealand have played a lot of cricket in recent times and it has been a while since that has happened. In recent years I have been surprised by how infrequently they have played, so to bounce back from a poor showing in the India series to dominate the opening match of this one in the way they did speaks volumes for their character and quality as a side
We saw the teeth of the New Zealand bowling attack in that opening match. After being made to bowl first on a good pitch for batting, after getting the run around by India it would have been easy to struggle for motivation but instead they ripped the game open with the new ball and never looked back from there. An excellent bowling display and a controlled batting effort was more than enough.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh were near enough out of the opening match before they got going with their top three shot out in next to no time at all. They battled hard with the bat and batted out the majority of their overs but they just lost too many wickets early on in the innings and there was never going to be an ability to recover from there, as try as they might.
Whether the pressure of knowing that they had to score big runs contributed to some of the wickets lost only they will know, but I suspect their batsmen know that their bowlers are going to struggle to contain New Zealand and went big as a result. It might be that chasing is their best route to victory in this match if they want to level the series.
Team News
I would imagine that New Zealand will want to level up the series before they make changes to their ranks but Todd Astle and Tim Southee will be eager for a chance to prove their worth ahead of the World Cup and they are knocking on the door.
Bangladesh have to look to do something about their bowling attack. They were completely toothless in Napier and even allowing for a natural improvement, just on paper they don’t look strong enough. Rubel Hossein could come in with that in mind.
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Betting
Generally Hagley Oval is a high scoring ground despite the larger boundaries than we are used to seeing on New Zealand grounds and I’m expecting plenty of runs to be scored in this match too. New Zealand have just shown how they can basically toy with this Bangladesh bowling attack and when you consider Bangladesh made 232 with Tamim and Mushfiqur Rahim making 10 between them there is more to come from the tourists.
The total runs line for this match is 520.5 which means we need scores in the 260 mark. Eight of the 12 first innings scores here have surpassed that figure and when these two met on the ground in their only previous meeting here there were more than 600 runs. I think there is plenty of mileage in the over on that line.
Tips
Back Over 520.5 runs for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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