The second half of the double header of action in The Hundred on Wednesday sees the last two winners of the tournament battling it out in the penultimate match of the group stage as the Trent Rockets take on the Oval Invincibles at Trent Bridge.
This is a much bigger match for the reigning champions Oval Invincibles than it is for the Trent Rockets as a win here would send Oval straight through to the final. Defeat could mean they need to go into the Eliminator. The Rockets are already out of contention.
Where to watch
This match will be shown on terrestrial TV with BBC Two showing the game as well as the Sky Sports Cricket and Sky Sports Mix channels with the build-up on each of them beginning at 6pm ahead of the 6.30pm start time.
Trent Rockets
The Trent Rockets would have gone into this season with their sights set on finishing in the top three at the very least and potentially higher than that after doing some work to their squad during the draft which they would have thought would make them better this term. Whether it did or it didn’t, they go into their last match with no chance of reaching the top three so you would have to say that whatever happens in this game they have underachieved this season.
The big issue for them is that their bowling hasn’t stood up to be counted at all. They have had the odd individual good spell from bowlers throughout the competition but they haven’t been able to maintain pressure on the batters either side of it and as a result that has put pressure on their own batters. While they have a solid enough top four, they are a team loaded with all-rounders, few of whom have batted like the Rockets would have wanted them to, and the pressure has sometimes told.
Oval Invincibles
This season has followed a similar path for the Oval Invincibles that the previous one did and they will be hoping that it ends in the same way too as that would mean that they become the first team in the history of the competition that successfully defences the title. Last term they were winning matches without looking completely convincing but they longer the campaign went on the better they got and ultimately won the competition. The same thing has happened this time around.
They weren’t at their best with the bat in the earlier stages of the competition and there are still a couple of batters they would like in better form so that Sam Curran doesn’t have to deliver as strongly as he has been doing. If you want to be critical of the Invincibles it would be that they are an out and out batter light but the way their bowling is performing that hasn’t come back to haunt them yet. The fear is that it does so in a knockout game and they can’t recover from it.
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Key Players
This feels like the sort of situation where Alex Hales can have some fun and express himself knowing that he’ll have a good pitch and small boundaries and the sort of stage where he can really shine. A big score from him would have the Rockets on their way.
Sam Curran has been the player of the tournament so far with the bat and the ball and if he comes off with either in this match then you would imagine that the Oval Invincibles will be well on their way to securing top spot.
Betting
I expect the Oval Invincibles to win this match and my confidence improved when it became apparent that Rashid Khan isn’t around for the remainder of the tournament. We’re not going to get rich backing them but 8/11 is a perfectly fair price based on what we have seen from the two teams recently. I’ve had my concerns over the Trent Rockets bowling throughout the competition and that isn’t going to change now that Rashid Khan has gone.
The other concern is the batting. Their last five scores in this competition have been 132/8, 125/8, 166/4, 126/8 and 118 all out. That run started against the Birmingham Phoenix in the match they were cruising before Dan Mousley bowled those wonderful last 10 balls and it looks like that has had an impact on them with the bat. When you consider that the Invincibles attack is up there with the best of them in the competition, we’ve got to think that the range of scores there is the higher end of what they’ll get here and I just don’t see that being enough for a weakened bowling unit to defend. I’ll play the visitors in this one.
Tips
Back Oval Invincibles to beat Trent Rockets for a 3/10 stake at 1.73 with William Hill
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