The ODI series between New Zealand and England continues in Hamilton on Wednesday when the home side will have the first of two chances to ensure that they come on top in proceedings when game two of the three is played out.
New Zealand where pretty convincing winners of the first game of the series and another win here will have it sewn up before the sides head to Wellington for the final game. England have to win here to force a deciding match.
New Zealand
After a T20 series which barely got going, New Zealand made full use of the opening game of the ODI series in Mount Maunganui. They got on top very early in proceedings and apart from a time where Harry Brook was threatening to launch a solo bid to take the game away from them, they rarely relinquished control and although they might not have won the game with as many wickets in hand as they would have wanted, the fact that they got over the line with more than 13 overs to spare highlights how emphatic their win was.
The job was largely done by the bowlers in that first game. 223 was never going to be a score that was daunting to chase down and while there were one or two hiccups along the way, the senior players got the job done for the Kiwis in the end and they ran out very worthy winners. They will be looking for their top three to get them off to a better start in this match and if they do then you would imagine that they would be very tough to beat as we saw the quality in their engine room last time out.
England
This isn’t the first time that England have begun a 50 over series slowly. There isn’t really an excuse this time around because they have been in the country for a T20 series and although not everyone played in those matches they have had time to acclimatise to the travelling and the conditions. They certainly need to come good in this second match else the third game will be largely irrelevant and when you consider that they are using this series to get the players who are involved in the Ashes next month some competitive action, a dead rubber is the last thing they will want.
If that is going to happen then England are going to have to bat better than they did in the opening game, especially at the top of the innings where their techniques were exposed. One positive for England is that they are probably going to need a high score here so that should suit their natural game a little more. To be fair to the English bowlers, they nearly rescued their batters in that opening match and will be hoping for some more runs on the board to assist them to victory here.
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Team News
New Zealand announced that Blair Tickner will be added to the ODI squad after Kyle Jamieson was ruled out of the series. He might have to wait for his first game though. Devon Conway and Mark Chapman will be hoping to force their way in.
England left Jofra Archer out of their side for the opening game of the series but he is expected to play at least one of the last two matches in it and you would imagine with the series on the line that he will come in for Sam Curran who didn’t really offer much in the opening match.
Betting
It is hard to see England batting as badly again in this second match as they did in the opening one so while I wouldn’t go as far as to suggesting that they will win this game, I do expect them to put up a better score having seen what they are up against and in turn I would therefore assume that they are going to hit more boundaries, especially when you consider the calibre of players who didn’t register anything in the boundary column earlier in the week.
While you can’t assume that Harry Brook will hit 20 of them again, we can probably safely assume that the likes of Jamie Smith, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jacob Bethell will register some boundaries and Jos Buttler will hit more than the one he did in that opening game. Despite those five hitting one boundary between them, England still registered 30 boundaries at the Bay Oval and so I’m a little surprised that with a much stronger batting effort expected here, that the line for England boundaries is only 31.5 here. I expect it to be covered.
Tips
Back England – Over 31.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.73 with Bet365
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