Places at Lord’s are up for grabs in the next couple of days as the Royal London One Day Cup semi-finals take place on Sunday and Monday.
The opening semi-final pitches Yorkshire and Gloucestershire against each other for the second time in the tournament with both sides aiming for an all too rare one day final for either in recent times.
Yorkshire have the home advantage and will be looking to make full use of a big crowd at Headingley but they could only come third in the group and beat a rancidly bad Essex side in the quarter final so it might be that the County Championship winners elect are a touch overrated.
Gloucestershire finished second in their group, a place above Yorkshire as luck would have it, and then took care of a very competent Hampshire side in the quarter final so we needn’t doubt their quality going into this semi-final.
Yorkshire have a few selection headaches to deal with ahead of this match. Glenn Maxwell definitely misses out as he’s with Australia and he’s been joined there by Aaron Finch although Finch was ineligible for this match anyway. Adil Rashid and Liam Plunkett are away with England and although they’ve been named in the squad with England 2-0 down in that series it is hard to see them being allowed to feature here. Adam Lyth, Gary Ballance and Jonny Bairstow are all available.
Gloucestershire will be boosted by the news that their captain Michael Klinger is available. He had gone back to Australia to prepare for their domestic season but he’s jumped on a flight back and captains the side here. Gareth Roderick will aim to continue his good form in the tournament here as will David Payne with the ball.
I think Yorkshire are there for the taking here. They’ve got a very inexperienced captain in Alex Lees who only took over a short while ago when Andrew Gale packed in the one day captaincy and they are missing some real strike players too.
Gloucestershire are a side devoid of individual stars apart from Michael Klinger but they are a team who know their roles and they all perform it to the best of their abilities and when the sum comes together the whole is a pretty potent package. I think they’re a huge price given what we’ve seen this season so they’re my pick at 15/8.
Yorkshire’s batting can be vulnerable in this competition as we saw when the two sides met at Scarborough earlier in the campaign when Gloucestershire rolled them out for 227 and the man who top scored for the White Rose in that match interests me here.
Scores down the order have been a feature of Yorkshire’s campaign in this tournament and Tim Bresnan could be decent value here if the young Yorkshire top order make a mess of things. Bresnan made 70 odd against Sussex in the Championship recently so he’s going well with the bat and at 20/1 there’s enough in his price to take a chance on him landing a second top score against the Bristol side this season.
Back Gloucestershire to beat Yorkshire for a 4/10 stake at 2.88 with Stan James
Back T.Bresnan Top Yorkshire Batsman for a 1/10 stake at 21.00 with William Hill
Blog cricket YTD: +8.95pts
