A place at Lord’s is at stake in the first Royal London One Day Cup semi-final on Sunday when Yorkshire take on Surrey at Headingley. The two sides are going well in the four day competition this season and both will be eyeing up the final of this tournament when they meet over the course of the 50 over format.
Yorkshire
Yorkshire’s One Day Cup campaign has been quite strange this season. They dominated their group in the early stages of it and then finished it poorly but perhaps most importantly they held themselves together to come through the quarter final albeit via the help of an awful umpire decision which halted Kent in their tracks.
By and large it has been the bowlers that have got Yorkshire through to this semi-final but with some decent weather in the build up to the game you would imagine their batsmen will have to come to the party if they are to make it down to Lord’s next month.
Surrey
Surrey are another side who have ridden their luck in this competition this season. They only made it through the group stage with a slogathon in the final week at Lord’s and now after an amazing quarter final win at Northampton they are one win from going back to the home of cricket.
It would be fair to say that Surrey’s bowlers have made it to this stage for them although they have shown more with the bat than Yorkshire have but then again they will have had to because they play on higher scoring wickets down in the South. That might serve them well here as it goes.
Team News
Yorkshire have been boosted by the news that England have released Jonny Bairstow to play in this match but David Willey wasn’t fit enough to be released. Adil Rashid, Joe Root and Liam Plunkett are all away with England but Yorkshire do have Gary Ballance available.
Surrey will be without Jason Roy and Gary Wilson as both are on international duty. Ravi Rampaul has a family issue to deal with so he is unavailable as well but Kumar Sangakkara is available as are both the Curran brothers.
Headingley
There have only been two matches on this ground this season in 50 over cricket and both have been fairly low scoring. One of the reasons for that is the quality of the Yorkshire bowling attack but it suggests that the wicket isn’t the easiest to bat on. It will be interesting to see if it gets any easier for this match.
This is never an easy ground to hit sixes on and if the wicket is slow and sticky then the boundaries aren’t necessarily accessible either but on bank holiday weekend the crowd should be big and hopefully the wicket will play true for the entire 100 overs.
Betting
If I’m honest neither of these sides have totally convinced me this season but someone is going to be going to Lord’s and I think that side can be Surrey. If Yorkshire were at full strength I might think differently but they’re not so I won’t.
I always think Yorkshire lack a batsman in this format of the game and they certainly do in this match and their bowling attack has been decimated by England call ups. In fairness you could argue similar about Surrey’s batting line up but their bowling looks a lot stronger on paper and in Kumar Sangakkara they have the standout cricketer on either side so those two facets make Surrey the bet at these prices.
Tips
WON – Back Surrey to beat Yorkshire for a 4/10 stake at 2.20 with Titanbet
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