The final regular season match in The Hundred takes place on Thursday evening and it is a huge one for the home side Birmingham Phoenix as they look to extend their season when they welcome the Manchester Originals to Edgbaston.
This one has a simple equation to it. If Birmingham win the match they will face the Southern Brave in the Eliminator at The Oval on Saturday while defeat will mean the Northern Superchargers take that spot. Manchester finish their season here.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Cricket channels with the build-up to it beginning at 6pm ahead of the 6.30pm start time.
Birmingham Phoenix
I always thought that the Birmingham Phoenix would be the team finishing the strongest in the regular season before a ball was bowled in this competition. They were disadvantaged by having players away in the Test squad at the start of the event and a Test match being at Edgbaston meant that their fixture list was a bit lopsided with the majority of their home games coming at the end of it. That is how it has played out and they now know one more home win sees them into the playoffs.
That is an equation they will settle for because they are generally very good at home, as we saw on Monday night when they took care of the Trent Rockets in pretty comfortable fashion, and last week when the Northern Superchargers got blown away. When the Phoenix get it right they are one of the best teams in the competition in all departments. The problem they have is it probably doesn’t take as much as it should do for things to go massively wrong.
Manchester Originals
Speaking of going massively wrong, the early stages of this season did exactly that for the Manchester Originals. They were bang ordinary in the first half of the campaign and while there is no doubt there has been a good improvement in the second part of the season, that has come far too late in the piece for them to offer up any sort of impact on the league table. They need to avoid a heavy defeat here to make sure they don’t get the wooden spoon but were they to finish bottom they would at least have the first draft pick next season.
The big problem with the Originals was their batting at the beginning of the season. There were mitigating circumstances of course but too many players were out of form as well which didn’t help. In the quirky nature of sport, once they had sorted that problem out their bowling started to let them down so they haven’t really been able to put in a complete performance. While they aren’t playing for anything tangible here, pride should see to them wanting to at least offer that up here.
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Key Players
We haven’t really seen Liam Livingstone in full flow yet but with the talk of tired pitches in the last week his brutal hitting combined with his useful spin would make him a big player for the Manchester Originals, especially as he is a county colleague of many of the opposition so knows them well.
Fazalhaq Farooqi has been a little up and down in this tournament. When he has been good he has destroyed top orders but when he has been off it he has gone around the park. The Originals are desperate for early poles from him here else this could get away from Manchester quickly.
Betting
Those who have followed us throughout the tournament will already be on Birmingham Phoenix to win this match courtesy of backing Manchester Originals to finish bottom of the table which is likely should the Phoenix win so I won’t back them here but I do see this one being a bit of a high scoring match although we do need to avoid a bit of rain if the forecast is to be believed so there is probably no point in getting involved in the runs and boundaries markets.
If the weather does come though and affects the length of the match then we could see a bigger role for Liam Livingstone with the bat. He is 13/2 with Bet365 to top score for the Phoenix and that could quickly become very big. It is big any way to be fair with him batting no lower than number four but he is a county teammate to a few in the opposition which can’t be a bad thing and Edgbaston certainly isn’t too big for him. Were the innings to be shortened there is a chance that as a right hander he could open the batting so I think he is worth a punt at 13/2.
Tips
Back L.Livingstone Top Birmingham Phoenix Batter for a 1/10 stake at 7.50 with Bet365
