England finish their tour of the Emirates on Monday afternoon with a third and final T20 international against Pakistan. In terms of winning the series there is nothing on this match because England sealed that with a game to spare in a thrilling second match on Friday but the World T20 is fast approaching which should ensure the competitiveness remains intact in this last game.
Pakistan have been hampered by some strange and soft dismissals with the bat and some pretty laboured fielding so far in this series. Mushtaq Ahmed has made a big thing of that over the weekend so it will be interesting to see if his criticism has been taken on board.
England have used all 15 men in this series so far and the encouraging thing for them is they haven’t looked any worse despite the different combinations. Their task now is to maintain their focus and their consistency even though the series is over from a competitive point of view.
Pakistan are likely to want another spinner to come into their side for this match but you would think they will look more at their batting line up before anything. Someone needs to be given the responsibility to bat through the innings for their big hitters to play around.
It remains to be seen how England will line up in this match. Nobody will have been able to predict their side in the opening two matches but there has been talk of giving everyone two matches so that could mean a recall for Eoin Morgan, Reece Topley and Chris Jordan but time will tell.
The Sharjah Cricket Stadium is the venue for England’s tour finale. There have been eight previous T20s here but this is the first time two full member nations meet in this format. We saw in the ODI here how accessible the boundaries are and I’m expecting very similar in this match.
With it being a dead rubber and with England’s line up almost impossible to predict I’m not really interested in the match betting. I guess law of average players will be with Pakistan but I’m not sure there is much value anywhere on either side in truth.
One area there is some value is in the sixes. We saw 11 sixes in the ODI here despite the scores being quite low. Pakistan only put up 208 batting first in that game so that shows the potential here. Pakistan have a much bigger hitting line up in the T20 game with the likes of Umar Akmal and Shahid Afridi in their ranks.
England hit big whichever format of the one day game they play and we’ve seen that throughout the limited overs matches on this tour so both sides combined should see us get to at least 13 maximums and quite possibly a good few more.
Back Over 12.5 sixes for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Betway
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