The much anticipated ODI series between New Zealand and India begins in the early hours of Wednesday morning for those of us who are in the UK, and it does so when the two teams compete in the opening match in Napier.
This is a five match series, which is one of the reasons why it is being looked forward to, so while there is time to comeback for whoever loses, these two sides are both very strong and will want to control the fortunes right from the outset.
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New Zealand
The Kiwis warmed up for this series with an emphatic 3-0 series victory against Sri Lanka earlier in the month, so they have a good platform to build from for these five matches. New Zealand’s batsmen were in wonderful form in that series but if there was a concern for them then it would come in the fact that their bowlers leaked quite a few runs against a relatively weak batting line up.
Whether those runs were only surrendered because their team had winning totals already on the board we may never know, but it goes without saying that they are going to have to be much stronger in that department against this powerful India batting line up. If they are then they have plenty of batting to get the job done here.
India
I wonder if India are beginning to feel the pinch having been away from home for so long. They have just completed a lengthy full tour of Australia and there were definite signs of sloppiness from them in the ODIs that ended that spell, weaknesses that we wouldn’t normally see from this Indian side. It could just be poor performances from individuals rather than anything serious but it is something to watch out for.
The other thing to look out for is whether India can find anything with the bat after they are four wickets down. MS Dhoni has been moved up the order, and in Australia he delivered the goods, but it did leave them looking incredibly light below him, and it has been a while since wickets 5-10 produced much. In fairness to those players they are not called upon as often as they would be in other teams.
Team News
Tom Latham returns with the gloves for this series for New Zealand. The home side are likely to play Mitchell Santner and Trent Boult with the injured Jimmy Neesham and Matt Henry making way for them for this opener.
India may look to get Kuldeep Yadav in alongside Yuzvendra Chahal although the small boundaries here could put paid to that idea. MS Dhoni continues with the gloves and Dinesh Karthik might get another go at number six.
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Betting
I’ll go with one bet to get the series up and running. It comes in the form of the boundaries, which I guess is not too much of a surprise given that the dimensions of this ground in the key areas are quite small, and that we have two batting line ups that are absolutely full of runs on show, even if India don’t deliver much further down their order.
New Zealand go into the series off the back of a fine three efforts with the bat and with Latham back they are even stronger on paper here. India should enjoy these conditions and this ground so all things being equal I’m expecting the boundaries to flow and with that should come more than 63.5 of them in total.
Tips
Back Over 63.5 boundaries for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
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