The biggest and best batters in the world will be on show at the T20 World Cup which gets underway in the early hours of Sunday morning and before the first ball is bowled we have the chance to take a look at the top tournament batter market.
We have some top quality batters in this tournament and grounds where smashing it out of the park will be the order of the day. The champions will have to play nine matches so there is plenty of room for big differences in the run scoring to take place.
Market Leaders
Virat Kohli is a 13/2 favourite to be the leading run scorer in the competition which is undoubtedly a legacy of him top scoring in the Indian Premier League season which has just concluded. The first issue with backing him is where he bats in this side. If he opens or bats at three he could go well but if he drops down the order for the power hitters then that could go against him. He is a little short for me but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does top score assuming India make the last four.
Jos Buttler is a 10/1 chance to be the leading scorer in the competition and that also seems fair enough. England have a good schedule in terms of grounds they play their group matches at and indeed three attacks which you would think he could get after. One negative might be that he is the captain and if it starts going wrong for England, or not perfectly anyway, then that might cloud his batting as it did in the 50 over competition.
Travis Head and Rohit Sharma are the next two in the betting. The former had a very good Indian Premier League campaign while the latter is a seasoned campaigner. Australia have an excellent schedule for the batters with their four group games being in Barbados, Antigua and St Lucia so Head will be a popular pick but he won’t have played a game in the West Indies prior to the Australia opener which might be an issue. Question marks will be whether Sharma is past his best so at 12/1 he might be a little short, especially if he opens with Kohli and needs to take more risks while his partner gets himself in.
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Profile
When you get involved in a market like this in any tournament the first thing we have to do is work out where to target. There are 20 teams in the event, each with seven genuine batters in their team but we can’t be betting in a field of 140 so we need to apply some filters to have a more select number to go at.
The first of those filters comes in batting position. I don’t think you want anyone who bats lower than number four for their respective team although the higher up the player bats the better because there is some rain around in the early stages of this event so you don’t want to be on someone who doesn’t get a bat. Another positive move could be to take players who have their first group games in New York, Barbados, Antigua or St Lucia which are generally the better batting tracks.
Betting
I’ll take a couple of players in the tournament this time around with the first of those being Will Jacks who could really come alive in this competition. He had a very strong Indian Premier League campaign with 230 runs in eight innings with a century and a fifty and he plays for an England side who should do some damage with the bat in this tournament. England play their group matches in Barbados and Antigua and if they qualify they will stay at those grounds and have a game in St Lucia as well so they couldn’t ask for better pitches to flourish on. Jacks will bat three for England so he might need to wait his turn but the grounds aren’t big enough to contain him and at twice the price of the two above him I’ll take the chance he gets in early enough to overtake their run output.
The other player who catches the eye at an even bigger price is Reeza Hendricks. He warmed up for this tournament with a couple of solid innings in the series against West Indies. He is the glue that a number of big hitting South Africa batters will look to bat around so he will be more of an accumulator of runs rather than smashing cameos but I’m fine with that given that South Africa are in a group with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal who are going to offer up plenty of overs of spin. He is one of the better players of spin in their side and a player who averages 35.13 in all T20s and 32.08 in T20Is can score a lot of runs to make his 40/1 price seem big.
Tips
Back W.Jacks Top Tournament Batter (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 26.00 with William Hill (1/4 1-4)
Back him here:
Back R.Hendricks Top Tournament Batter (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 41.00 with Sky Bet (1/4 1-4)
