The Royal London One Day Cup quarter finals take place this week with two matches on Wednesday and two on Thursday. The televised match on Wednesday sees Somerset hosting Worcestershire down at Taunton with a semi-final at home to Warwickshire or Essex the reward for the winners.
Somerset
Somerset topped the South Group in impressive style earlier in the competition but the tournament really starts here. One bad hour can end a campaign so dealing with the pressure will be important. Somerset are a young side in this competition so it will be interesting to see how they go about dealing with that.
Somerset have qualified on the back of their bowlers it is fair to say but that doesn’t mean that they can’t bat. They have some excellent one day batsmen. If there is a criticism of them it is that they are a batsman light but if the likes of Peter Trego gets going then Somerset can blow any match out of the water.
Worcestershire
Worcestershire began the white ball season in excellent form but then things took a nose dive in the second half of both events and in the end they had to crawl over the line in this tournament having missed out in the T20. Just like Somerset this is a young Worcestershire side and all eyes will be on them to see how they too deal with the pressure.
Just like their opponents here Worcestershire have bowled really well throughout the competition but they have also shown they can put up big totals which could be crucial. Worcestershire could be disadvantaged by going into this match off the back of a hard four day game which was played in hot conditions at times.
Team News
We know Jamie Overton will be missing from the Somerset line up for this match. He is out for the season while Marcus Trescothick isn’t playing one day cricket this season, only the four day stuff. Mahela Jayawardena is still around to perform the overseas duties.
Worcestershire have been boosted by the news that Moeen Ali has been given permission to play in this match. They need him though because they don’t have an overseas player with Kyle Abbott now back on international duty.
Betting
I think Moeen Ali being available for Worcestershire is a game changer here. He compliments their batting line up nicely but after a period of warm weather he will add something to their bowling too and Worcestershire could in theory have a three prong spin attack which could be crucial here.
One day matches don’t always follow the logic but Worcestershire have the better, longer batting line up and there isn’t much between the attacks, Worcestershire might even have the edge in that department too and that should be able to equate into a win for them.
As ever I’ll chance a top batsman with Roelof van der Merwe looking a big price. He plays spinners well which you’ll need to do against this Worcestershire attack but he also clobbers seamers miles as well. In a batting line up which is probably lacking a solid classy batsman to compliment Allenby, Jayawardena and Hildreth it is worth paying to see how close the Dutch international gets.
Tips
Back Worcestershire to beat Somerset for a 4/10 stake at 2.38 with Coral
Back them here:
Back R.van der Merwe Top Somerset Batsman for a 1/10 stake at 18.00 with Paddy Power
Back him here:
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