Two adversaries meet in the first of the two T20 World Cup 2024 matches to get underway in the competition on Tuesday when the defending champions England begin their title defence when they face Scotland in Barbados.
These two sides have already seen Namibia and Oman play out a tight match in Group B and they will both be keen to get off to a positive start as they go about launching a push to qualify for a tricky little section.
England
England begin their quest to be the first nation to successfully defend this tournament with a match they will be heavily expected to win but they won’t need reminding that they have been shocked by associate teams in this competition in the past and will need to be fully focused to ensure it doesn’t happen again. They have twice lost to the Netherlands in this tournament and lost their only T20I against Ireland as well so England would be foolish to take their eye off the ball here.
Should England take this seriously and be at their best though you would imagine the batting power and depth that they have will be too much for Scotland with the bat should someone make sure they take responsibility to lead them to a total. In these conditions they should also have more than enough with the ball unless someone has a day out so this contest should be about laying a marker down for the rest of the campaign.
Scotland
Scotland have qualified for another T20 World Cup and they will be looking to give another positive showing now that they are here. They will probably target beating Namibia and Oman and then that would put them in the position that if they can find a way to make either England or Australia sweat and panic they could sneak into a top two spot to make progress. If they are able to do that then whatever the outcome they will feel that they have had a good tournament.
If that is going to happen then the onus will be on their batters to go well. I think it is the weaker of the two facets for them even though they have a few players in their side who have played county cricket and have been or are professional cricketers. Even without a key bowler in Josh Davey their bowling does look their strongest suit, although we saw in the Netherlands recently that he can around the park late in the innings if they are not careful.
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Team News
England seemingly have one selection decision to make ahead of their opening match and it looks like the left-arm variation of Reece Topley will get him the nod over the out and out pace of Mark Wood. Liam Livingstone has been passed fit to play.
Scotland are expected to revert to their opening pairing of George Munsey and Michael Jones after trying out some different combinations in the Netherlands. Their bowling unit is similar to the last T20 World Cup expect Brad Currie replaces Josh Davey.
Betting
This match is said to be played on the same pitch that Namibia and Oman battled it out on and that would make sense because there is less than 36 hours between that one ending and this one beginning which probably isn’t long enough to get a new track prepared. That wicket offered up turn pretty much from the outset and in a day game with the sun beating down I’m not expecting to see anything different from this one.
That makes me think that Adil Rashid is going to be a key man for England in this match. Associate sides struggle to play out high quality mystery spin at the best of times but when conditions are in the favour of the spinner that only adds to the difficulty they have. If you go back to the Netherlands last month, the Irish leg spinners took 2-40 from seven overs against them and the Dutch spinners had joy too. Rashid is better than all of them and the 5/6 he takes more than 1.5 wickets looks too good to ignore here.
Tips
Back A.Rashid – Over 1.5 wickets for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Coral
