The fourth season of The Hundred comes to a close on Sunday when the final is played out at Lord’s and we are guaranteed a team winning their second title for the first time as the Oval Invincibles take on the Southern Brave for the trophy.
The Southern Brave were the first winners of this tournament while the Oval Invincibles are the current champions and will be looking to be the first team to successfully defend this competition. We should be in for a great final.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the BBC Two and Sky Sports Cricket channels with the build-up on both beginning at 5.30pm ahead of the 6pm kick off.
Oval Invincibles
The Oval Invincibles finished top of the table which gave them the huge advantage of skipping the Eliminator on Saturday night. They have been able to have the best preparation for this final and so there are no real excuses for them not to deliver the goods. They will be delighted to have woken up and seen the sun shining in London as there is no issue with their spinners having to bowl with a wet ball or anything like that so everything looks set up for Oval to give a good account of themselves.
Oval have probably been the best bowling team in the competition this season with Adam Zampa and Sam Curran among the leading wicket takers and them being well backed up by the likes of Nathan Sowter but an injury to Spencer Johnson and Gus Atkinson being called away by England could leave them a little short in the early part of their innings should someone start to go around the park. They have shown they have the batting depth to go well but they do go into this match having lost their last league game.
Southern Brave
There is no doubt that the Southern Brave have been riding their luck this week and they will hope that lady luck continues to shine on them for another 24 hours and allow them to win their title back. There is absolutely no guarantee that without the rain coming when it did in their final group game that they would have made the finals and then in the Eliminator they needed an extraordinary bottle job to go their way to get into a super over to make it into this final.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some within the Brave ranks wondering if their name is on the trophy based on all that but they need to go out and perform here and they need their big England stars to come to the party with the ball. There is no suggestion that Jofra Archer will be unable to play in this final and they need his Sunday best here. The batting is generally going ok and there is definitely still more to come so if Southern Brave can put it all together they’ll be hard to stop.
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Key Players
Adam Zampa has had a brilliant tournament so far and he is likely to end it as the leading wicket taker. Some of his spell will probably be saved for when Kieron Pollard gets to the crease and if he can win that battle the Invincibles will take a step to the title.
Generally in big matches teams need their big player to stand up and be counted and James Vince is that man in this side. He has the potential to bat through the innings and allow the bigger hitters some freedom of going at the other end. If he gets going he’ll get the Oval side nervous.
Betting
I am already on the Southern Brave for the title having backed them outright before a ball was bowled so I have them to win this match at 7/1. While I would rather they hadn’t ridden their luck as much as they have this week, I’m not going to ditch the girl I took to the dance this late in the piece so I’ll let that ride in the hope that a more competitive performance can come out of them which can win this final.
The bet I will take though, slightly as a saver for the Southern Brave outright, is for Sam Curran to cover his 39.5 point performance line. It is hard to see Oval Invincibles going well if Curran doesn’t give a good all-round display and while he hasn’t batted in the last two matches, I do think he’ll bat here and his last three scores have been 51*, 68 and 35. He didn’t take a wicket with the ball in the opening match but since then he has taken two or more in six of the last seven including five wickets here at Lord’s earlier in the campaign, in the match he made the 51* in. Throw in that he fields in key positions and there is enough to think that this line looks low. He totalled 75 points in the first meeting between these two so this line looks low.
Tips
Back S.Curran’s Performance – Over 39.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
Back him here:
