The penultimate round of The Hundred gets underway on Wednesday evening when the Southern Brave play host to the Welsh Fire in a match which has a lot more riding on it for the home side than it does the visitors.
The Brave have rescued what was a pretty ordinary start from them to put themselves in among the contenders for the knockout stage of the competition while the Fire have done the other way. They have thrown away a promising start.
Southern Brave
There seems to be something about a Mahela Jayawardene coached side that says they have to lose their first match of a tournament and then come firing back at the end of the initial phase and peak for the knockout stages. That is generally how the Mumbai Indians have done it in the Indian Premier League and so far that is how the Southern Brave are doing it too. It means they are under pressure to keep winning but often in these franchise events momentum is easily carried forward.
The big reason why the Brave have come good in the latter part of the competition so far is they have a settled side now. It was probably always going to take time for them to get their best formation when you consider that the likes of Andre Russell, Dave Warner and Shadab Khan didn’t come over while Jofra Archer was injured and Quinton de Kock was unavailable for the first couple of games. They look a decent side with bat and ball now and can’t be ruled out both here and for the rest of the competition.
Welsh Fire
The Welsh Fire opened up this competition in excellent form, winning their opening two matches, one of which was against the Southern Brave, but once Jonny Bairstow went to the England squad their campaign has unravelled and they have lost their last four matches, the latest three of which they were resoundingly beaten as well. Much has been attributed to the captaincy of Ben Duckett which is a little harsh because he is an inexperienced captain with a bowling attack which clearly isn’t good enough.
That is their problem but the other issue they have heading into this match is that you would think their best chance would be to chase a score down however when they had that opportunity in their last match against the Birmingham Phoenix they delivered their worst display of the competition to date. That defeat has put the Fire out of the competition so at least they might be able to free up and try for a consolation win in the same vein as the London Spirit did on Tuesday.
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Key Men
Quinton de Kock has been in fine form for the Southern Brave since his arrival into the competition and with the Welsh Fire low on confidence, if he can power the Southern Brave off to a quick start here then it could go some way to breaking the match open.
The Welsh Fire are absolutely desperate for a bowler to stand up and be counted and if that can be David Payne and he can burst through the two openers with the new ball he would give the Fire a better chance of victory given that a lot of the Brave middle order haven’t seen much cricket recently.
Betting
This isn’t the easiest betting heat to bet on because the Brave are priced up as a team who have to win whereas we saw on Tuesday night, if we needed any reminding, that need to win doesn’t equate to will win. As it is I do think the Brave will win but I’m not confident enough to be taking a short price on them to do so. I certainly don’t want to be with the Fire whether they are playing with freedom or not as their bowling looks a mess.
I will go with one bet though but it is in the side markets and it comes in one of the batsman match bets where surprisingly Ben Duckett is the outsider to beat Tom Banton. I like Banton and rate him highly but he’s in no form whatsoever, going past 15 just once in his six matches. Ironically that was against the Southern Brave when he got stuck into Danny Briggs in the first over and got going. Even in scoring 34 in that match he didn’t outscore Duckett and in fact he hasn’t outscored his captain in any of the six matches this season. Banton has scores of 4, 34, 15, 2, 5 and 0 in this competition compared to Duckett who has 41, 53, 32, 65, 12 and 16. The form of these two is chalk and cheese and while each match is different, the long-term form of Duckett tells me he shouldn’t be the outsider here.
Tips
Back B.Duckett to beat T.Banton for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
Back him here:
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