Sri Lanka conclude their white ball tour of New Zealand on Saturday when the two teams head to Eden Park in Auckland to round off a three-match ODI series which has already been won by the hosts courtesy of their two wins so far.
Although New Zealand have wrapped up the series this is the chance for their fringe players to impress once again with the Champions Trophy on the horizon. It is also the opportunity for Sri Lanka to leave with a confidence restoring win.
New Zealand
I would imagine that New Zealand will be surprised by how comfortably they have won this series when you consider that Sri Lanka were in decent form heading into it and this isn’t exactly the strongest squad that the home side have ever put together. That is very much to their credit. They were fortunate to win a good toss in the opening game but they lost a good one in the second one to balance it out but they won both matches with plenty in hand.
The New Zealand bowlers have been all over the Sri Lanka batters in this series and that bodes well for them when they get to the Champions Trophy because there are a few bowlers who will undoubtedly be involved in that tournament. New Zealand have been solid enough with the bat but if they are going to win the Champions Trophy they will need to bump their scores up to and beyond 300, although a raft of batters to come back will help with that.
Sri Lanka
Although these aren’t conditions that are necessarily best suited to Sri Lanka, I still think they will be disappointed with their showings so far. We could probably excuse their poor display in the opening game because that was a bad toss to lose but there were no excuses in the second one and in truth they probably performed worse with the advantage that they were given before a ball was bowled. They will be looking to sign off with a much better performance here.
There is no doubt where Sri Lanka will need to improve if they are to depart with a win. They have to bat a whole lot better than they have in the two matches so far where they haven’t really given themselves a chance to shine. In the main they have bowled well in this series and will need to here with this being a high scoring ground but even if they do it won’t matter a great deal if there isn’t a dramatic improvement with the bat in hand.
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Team News
Tom Latham returned to the side for the previous match but with the series won New Zealand might choose to give Mitchell Santner a bit of a rest and bring Michael Bracewell into the team as a like-for-like replacement.
After two failed batting showings it would be a surprise if Sri Lanka don’t change something in their batting unit. That might just be a shuffle to the order but if it involves a switch in personnel then Nuwanidu Fernando could come in for a first appearance in the series.
Betting
I don’t really want to get too involved in a match which ultimately is a dead rubber but these two teams were in this position a week or so ago in the final T20 and we got a high scoring thriller and given the short straight boundaries here it would be daft to not expect similar given that there is no competitive pressure on this match. This isn’t necessarily as high a scoring ground as you would think with those short boundaries but generally everything is one, four or six here.
With that in mind, I’m a little surprised that we can get a sixes line of 10.5 for this one. While Sri Lanka have struggled to put scores on the board they have cleared the ropes in both matches and you would imagine on this ground that New Zealand will have no problems contributing to the sixes count, especially if Sri Lanka go in with two spinners again. This line doesn’t look nearly high enough to me so I’m happy to be on the over.
Tips
Back Over 10.5 sixes for a 4/10 stake at 1.73 with Boylesports
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