It is do or die for the two teams in the second part of the double header in the T20 World Cup on Tuesday as the Group A clash between Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates takes place at Kardinia Oval in Geelong.
These two lost their opening match of the competition and a second loss is likely to be fatal. They will probably still need to win their final game later in the week to qualify but at least victory will keep those hopes alive.
Sri Lanka
I think it is fair to say we didn’t see the best of Sri Lanka in the opening match of the tournament. I don’t think they were as terrible as it was made out but at the same time they would have expected to beat Namibia let alone get blown away by them. For three quarters of their bowling innings they had things under control but they let it get away from them in the last five overs and that seemed to seep into their batting which never really got going.
The issue they seemed to have with the bat was because they have been in good form recently they all thought that if they didn’t get it done the next man up would and it ended up with nobody taking responsibility for guiding the innings and getting them home. One or two were guilty of playing expansive shots looking to stamp their authority on things but it would be a huge surprise if that mistake was made again.
UAE
The UAE went into their opening game looking to be competitive and hope to pinch a win. They weren’t really competitive with the bat in their hand. It is hard to be too harsh on them because they haven’t had the opportunity to compete at this level and on these pitches very often but there was an air of naivety about them in the opening stages with the bat and then they got into a position where they chased it and ended up panicking and got themselves into a right mess.
The annoying thing from their point of view is if they could just have batted a little more sensibly and got themselves another 15-20 runs they would have had a really good chance of coming out on top because they bowled brilliantly. What was admirable about their bowling effort was they were getting carted in the early stages but they kept their nerve and almost rescued an impossible situation. That will give them some confidence here but they need to bat much better.
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Team News
Sri Lanka might consider changes after their shambles of a result against Namibia but they won’t be able to call upon Dilshan Madushanka has he has been ruled out of the tournament. Binura Fernando is replacing him in the squad but it remains to be seen whether he is available straight away.
UAE would certainly have reason to make changes to their side, especially to their batting unit, but they might trust the players they picked as their best team for the opener to go out and deliver a better showing.
Betting
We saw on Sunday that hitting boundaries on this ground is not the easiest thing in the world. The pitch looked ordinary and played even worse than that and the longer the day went on the harder it got to bat on. I don’t expect any different here so I think the 32.5 boundaries line is a little on the high side. Namibia were the only team to bat well here on Sunday, making 163, but that innings only contained 14 boundaries and in reply Sri Lanka were only good for eight of them.
UAE hit even less than that in their first match. A no better than ok Dutch attack restricted them to six boundaries and it wasn’t like UAE got clobbered to all parts either. The straight boundaries here are absolutely massive and the outfield was very slow on Sunday and isn’t likely to have quickened up much. There will already have been a game on the pitch earlier in the day and with UAE likely to struggle against a decent Sri Lanka attack I think 32.5 boundaries is a few too many here.
Tips
Back Under 32.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
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