The Royal London One Day Cup heads to the Isle of Wight on Tuesday as the Vitality Blast champions Hampshire take a home match to the island when they take on Northamptonshire in Group B of the 50 over competition.
Hampshire head to the island with a perfect record of two wins from two matches while Northamptonshire recovered from losing their opening match to win their second one over the weekend so both teams will be feeling good about their chances. As ever to watch this match we need to load up the live stream.
Hampshire
Hampshire are having a brilliant season but with almost double figure numbers away at The Hundred it was less sure whether they could be competitive in this format of the game. They are a much younger unit in the Royal London One Day Cup but it says everything about both the depth in their squad and the quality of their academy that they have won their opening two matches. In Worcestershire and Kent they have beaten a couple of less impacted sides too.
The positive thing for Hampshire is they have won both their matches defending a score, one an average score and another which was anything but average as they ran up 396/5 against Kent. Their bowling attack has been quite a young one so far this season but they have bolstered their squad for this match and look an even stronger outfit. Hampshire will go top of the table with a win in this one so they don’t lack for incentives and motivation either.
Northamptonshire
Given that prior to this tournament beginning Northamptonshire had only lost one player to The Hundred, there were high hopes of a decent run in this competition for the side who blew a good chance to make the knockout stages of the Vitality Blast. That should have added to their motivation this season so they would have been disappointed to drop the opening game of the competition. To their credit, they made up for it with a brilliant run chase against Essex on Sunday.
You get the impression that Northamptonshire are going to be involved in a number of high scoring matches in this competition, although whether that is sustainable in the next week or two with the temperatures that are going to blast over the UK remains to be seen. They could really do with their bowling to come to the party, particularly the spinners they have at their disposal. If they do that then we know they have the batting to compete.
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Team News
Hampshire will be forced into a change for this match with Ian Holland away on international duty. Kyle Abbott and Keith Barker have been added to the squad and one of those are likely to replace the Hampshire all-rounder.
Northamptonshire will also be forced into a change as Saif Zaib has been called up as a late replacement for the Northern Superchargers. That means they will be without their match-winner from Sunday. Ben Sanderson, Ben Curran and Freddie Heldreich are in the squad but Tom Taylor and Lewis McManus are unavailable.
Betting
Hampshire are a young side in this competition but there is the potential for them to be at their strongest here with one of Keith Barker or Kyle Abbott coming into the side. On the flip side of that Northamptonshire are going to be at their weakest with a couple of key players out and although Ben Sanderson makes a welcome return he played in the T20 competition and went around the park at the end of the innings.
In fact, that is the big problem with Northamptonshire both in this match and the tournament as a whole. There is nobody to stem the flow of runs when a team either gets a partnership going or when a team sets up a platform to go big at the end of the innings. Usually Northamptonshire can counter that with runs themselves but there is no getting around the fact that Saif Zaib is a huge loss in that regard. Hampshire have plenty of runs in them and a decent attack and look a good bet here at 10/11.
Tips
Back Hampshire to beat Northamptonshire for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Coral
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