The qualifying part of the T20 World Cup has come to an end now which means the main tournament begins on Tuesday. That gives us enough time to go through the two outstanding outright markets that we have yet to cover namely the top batsman and top bowler ones.
We’ll begin with the top batsman market where it is no surprise that Virat Kohli is the favourite around the 9/1 mark. He is clearly a class act and with India favourites for the tournament it makes perfect sense for him to be the favourite.
One thing which might hold him back slightly is the venues India play their group matches in with their opening game in Nagpur which we’ve seen already is slow and turning sharply with big boundaries and Mohali is a big ground too.
The grounds can often be a guide to nailing these sorts of markets. While anyone can go well on any given occasion, when you only have four group matches it makes sense to focus on those playing mainly on the smaller grounds where in theory big runs are easier to come by. Obviously whoever you back still has to get in and score but it does no harm knowing your player is scoring on tiny boundaries.
With that in mind I think the two grounds to focus on are Bangalore and Mumbai. Bangalore is a ridiculously tiny ground at altitude where the ball naturally flies a little further while the wicket at the Wankhede is one of the best batting ones in the world.
As ever in T20 cricket I think we’re looking for someone who will bat in the top three, especially with so relatively few innings. You don’t want to be hoping your player gets enough time in the middle. If you take someone in the top three you know they’ll get it.
Kohli is the favourite in the market but there are so many great batsmen at this tournament. AB de Villiers and Rohit Sharma are next in the betting at 10/1 with Dave Warner and Quinton de Kock going at 16/1. You can get a big looking 18/1 on Chris Gayle with Martin Guptill the same price. It is 22/1 bar those seven men.
England play two of their four matches in Mumbai which should see a few runs scored and even their other two matches are only in Delhi which isn’t the biggest ground in the world so it would be no surprise to me if an England player does well.
Jason Roy has been going well in the warm up match but I’m still concerned he gets a start and gives it away too much for my liking. Joe Root and Jos Buttler just about bat high enough up the order to come into the equation but the Mumbai ground has been Alex Hales’ home ground in the past and that could be significant.
Hales is one of the best limited overs players in the game at the minute but having Roy alongside him is no bad thing. While Roy is flaying away at one end Hales can build his way into his innings as he likes to do and then he can go big once he has played himself in.
Hales heads into this tournament in excellent form. He recently made half centuries in every innings of the ODI series in South Africa and already has 44 in a warm up game with New Zealand on this tour. England are in the weaker of the two groups as far as the quality of the bowling attacks are concerned and if they come out of the group I’m expecting Hales to go very close here.
If runs are to come big they may well do so in Bangalore where Bangladesh play two of their matches which has got me interested in the chances of Tamim Iqbal.
We know Tamim is in excellent form from the qualifiers for this tournament where he has scores of 83*, 47 and 103*. None of them scores count in this market but few batsmen are going into the tournament in the form he’s in.
If he can get in and get going in the two matches in Bangalore then he may well have enough of a platform to add to in the Kolkata games to see him contributing heavily to the run charts in this tournament. Bangladesh are an outside chance of the semi-finals and qualifying for those would do no harm but at 50/1 I’m happy to pay to see how many runs Tamim makes in the main draw.
Back A.Hales Top Tournament Batsman (e/w) for a 1.5/10 stake at 26.00 with Boylesports (1/4 1-5)
Back him here:
Back T.Iqbal Top Tournament Batsman (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 51.00 with Betfred (1/4 1-4)
