The T20 series between New Zealand and Pakistan has reached the middle match which comes along on Friday when the two sides head to Auckland for the third game of the five and the first in which the Kiwis can claim the overall spoils.
Pakistan haven’t really been at the races in this series yet but they are going to need to arrive to the party here and now if they want to take it to a fourth match. New Zealand will want it done here and now so they can try things in the last two games.
New Zealand
I would imagine that New Zealand are absolutely delighted with how this series is going so far. Even if you had told them that they would be 2-0 up in the fashion that they have been they probably wouldn’t have believed it given the amount of players they are missing on IPL duty but they have dominated both games so far and now get the reward of three chances to win the series, which would be a good achievement with a largely second string squad.
The Kiwis have ridden their bowling attack in this tournament so far. You would have to say that they have had a bit of fortune to win two pretty big tosses to win but they still had to make the most of it and they did that in both matches. We haven’t really seen the full extent of their batting yet but when you look at the order there is plenty of depth there so even if New Zealand are forced to bat first there is nothing to suggest that they won’t be able to cope.
Pakistan
You have to feel a little sorry for Pakistan in this series so far. They were probably always going to need the run in their opening match, although even then they would have been expected to perform much better than they actually ended up doing, and then having had their run out they were on the wrong end of a hard toss to lose in a shortened match where the covers had been on the wicket long enough to make batting first much trickier.
They will hope that they get a bit of luck go their way in this match because they haven’t had too much of it so far. They will still need to perform better even if they get it, especially at the top of the order with the bat, where their openers have questions to answer. Their bowlers have worked hard but haven’t really had much to defend so far so it would be wrong to judge them. On this ground they will be tested though you would imagine.
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Team News
This series comes along thick and fast and there is a fair bit of travelling involved as well so New Zealand have rotated their bowlers so far and you would imagine they will do that again here with Kyle Jamieson returning, potentially in place of Jacob Duffy.
Mohammad Ali has been very expensive in this series so far and you would imagine he will be two and done as far as Pakistan are concerned for the mean time. Abbas Afridi would be a natural replacement should that be the case.
Betting
It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that I like over 15.5 sixes here. We know how short these straight boundaries are at Eden Park and if there is one thing we have seen from Pakistan in this series it is that they are going to go down swinging and it only takes a couple of top edges here and the sixes will soon start ramping up. To be fair, even in tricky conditions in the second game Pakistan got a few over the ropes and this new aggressive outlook should hit sixes if nothing else.
The sixes line for this one is 15.5 which is fairly low here, especially when you consider that chasing nine an over in the last game New Zealand hit 11 sixes on a bigger ground than this. Essentially, what we have here are two sides who like to give the ball a whack and short boundaries that are ideal for that to happen. These two met in a T20 match here last January and there were 22 sixes involving a Pakistan team which were nothing like as aggressive as this one are preaching to be. It all adds up to more than 15.5 sixes here.
Tips
Back Over 15.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Boylesports
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