The Royal London One Day Cup continues to roll along on Wednesday when five more group matches are played. Four of the matches kick off in a busy morning session before Warwickshire host Hampshire in a televised match with an afternoon start.
Tuesday saw wins for Gloucestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Essex and Surrey with the win for the latter confirming their place in the quarter final even this early in their campaign. Tuesday was also a third profitable day for this blog in the competition although Tuesday’s winnings were miniscule compared to the two days that preceded it.
Moving onto Wednesday and once again sides are fighting for quarter final places with group matches just starting to run out. Glamorgan begin the Swansea festival with a home match against a Sussex side who are as good as out of the competition. Worcestershire are also out but they host Gloucestershire in a big game for the visitors. Yorkshire head to Scarborough to face Somerset and Essex take on Middlesex at Colchester.
There isn’t a lot that I like in the non TV matches on Wednesday I have to say. I welcome and applaud Bet365 for pricing up performance markets in all the non TV games but nothing really catches my eye too much especially as I’m expecting lots of runs in the matches on the outgrounds.
There is one bet I’m going to take though and that is Gloucestershire to beat Worcestershire. It isn’t ideal that Gloucestershire were playing in Bristol on Tuesday but equally it wasn’t ideal that Worcestershire didn’t finish in London until gone 9.30pm on Tuesday night. In fact the schedule might affect them more than their opponents.
One thing that will affect Worcestershire more than anything was the injury to their captain Daryl Mitchell. He went in the hamstring and has been ruled out of this match at least. Not only do they need to find another opening batsman, which will probably be Richard Oliver, but they need to find a canny bowler to bowl Mitchell’s overs.
Gloucestershire are flying in this competition. They have won the four matches they have been able to complete and another win here will see them into the quarter finals at the earliest opportunity and chasing a home match when they get there. They have Michael Klinger absolutely flying at the minute and the likes of David Payne and Craig Miles are bowling really well.
Worcestershire are likely to have motivation issues given that they are out of the competition and won’t have got back to Worcester until the early hours of the morning. For me this one is well set up for a facile and straight forward Gloucestershire win.
Back Gloucestershire to beat Worcestershire for a 5/10 stake at 1.80 with Paddy Power
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