The third and final part of a busy day at the T20 World Cup on Thursday comes from Perth as Pakistan and Zimbabwe look to get their first win on the board in Group 2 of the Super 12s stage of the competition.
Pakistan will still be reeling from the heartache of losing out at the last minute to India, while Zimbabwe were probably helped by the rain in their opening match but will look to show their skills much more here.
Pakistan
It will be interesting to see the demeanour of the Pakistan camp ahead of this match because that defeat to India at the weekend has to hurt. For 232 of the 240 balls it was a good performance from Pakistan, not a perfect one but certainly more than acceptable, and they were well on top but they let all their good work come undone in the final eight balls as they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. It is easy to say they need to park that game but sometimes it is easier said than done.
I guess the test for Pakistan here is for their bowlers to prove that letting that match against India go was just a blip. You still think they will get through if they come out of this one unscathed and are able to win out from here but they could do with a confidence restoring performance from the death bowlers just for a bit of comfort. Their openers failed against India and that doesn’t happen too often so they’ll be eager to get back to scoring runs too.
Zimbabwe
We probably can’t take too much away from the Zimbabwe opening game in this Super 12 stage of the competition. You can never yield much from a nine over slog fest and then you certainly can’t get much from it when the rain came and shortened the game down even from that reduced amount of overs. Conditions were pretty tough to play in and probably shouldn’t have been played in at all so I’m happy to write that one off for Zimbabwe.
We can however take plenty from their opening group when they came through the first stage of the competition on top of a very competitive section with their bowling really menacing and when they didn’t get ahead of themselves they batted very sensibly. The big thing to take from that group was how they managed a run chase in a knockout game in the final match of it. That tells us this is a team that can handle some pressure.
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Team News
There appears to be no noises coming from the Pakistan camp that suggests they will replace one of their spinners with a seamer for this game. You don’t need two spinners here and Mohammad Nawaz could be made a scapegoat but it appears that Pakistan will be unchanged.
Zimbabwe may need to make a change to their side as it looked like Richard Ngarava slipped in the moist conditions in the open game and rolled an ankle. He hasn’t been ruled out of this game but if he isn’t fit then Brad Evans will come into the team.
Betting
I’ll go with a couple of bets in this match and the first of them is a stronger than usual one on the amount of boundaries in the game. The line for this one is up at 36.5 and I’m not convinced it gets anywhere near let alone gets covered. We saw a fairly action packed match here on Tuesday between Australia and Sri Lanka and there were only 31 boundaries in that one and earlier in the tournament a big hitting England team hit just six boundaries in three-quarters or so of an innings. Both these teams are full of seamers who can bring their length back to make sure they are not hit to the shorter straight boundaries and we saw in the previous matches that the top orders can be got stuck into. I don’t think this one goes anywhere close to 36.5 boundaries barring something extreme.
I’ll also take a chance on Luke Jongwe to continue his good form with the bat for Zimbabwe. He comes into this match off the back of scores of 20* and 29 in the two innings he has played in this tournament and prior to it he made 35 against Bangladesh. He also has a 30* in a T20 against Pakistan on his CV last year so although he bats at seven or eight he can clearly wield the willow. We’ve seen the new ball do all sorts on this ground so far and with the quality on show for Pakistan at the top of the bowling innings it wouldn’t be a surprise if a few Zimbabwean batters go early. At 28/1 I’ll pay to see how the innings plays out.
Tips
Back Under 36.5 boundaries for a 4/10 stake at 1.73 with William Hill
Back it here:
Back L.Jongwe Top Zimbabwe Batter for a 1/10 stake at 29.00 with Bet365
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