It's England versus Australia in a T20I from Southampton on Wednesday night – Richard Mann previews the action.
Old rivals England and Australia renew hostilities when facing off in the first of three T20Is in Southampton on Wednesday, 6.30pm, UK time, and it’s the visitors who are favoured with bookmakers to claim the early bragging rights.
With England’s white-ball teams currently going through a rebuilding phase and captain Jos Buttler ruled out of the series through injury, Australia are 4/6 best price and hardening all the time to win Wednesday’s opener.
Australia are not at full strength, either, but their batting looks close to first choice and in Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh and Marcus Stoinis, some of their biggest hitters are in town. That trio all impressed when Australia hammered England at the recent T20 World Cup in the Caribbean.
Head has become one of the leading all-format batsmen in the world and at the top of the order in white-ball cricket, he is a force like few others. At that T20 World Cup, he averaged 42.50 and finished with a strike-rate of 158.50. In the IPL earlier in the year, Head led the Sunrisers Hyderabad resurgence as he ended the season with a tally of 567 runs and an eye-watering strike-rate of 191.55.
Whoever gets the nod to open with Head, be it the exciting and equally destructive Jake Fraser-McGuirk, whose own IPL saw him score 330 runs at a staggering strike-rate of 234.04, or the powerful Matt Short, the Australians are sure to go hard from ball one. This is what captain Marsh has demanded from his players and he certainly leads by example in that regard.
Josh Inglis will bat at number four, fresh from his 49-ball 103 against Scotland recently, so if conditions are favourable for batting, it’s easy to think the visitors will be capable of posting a big score. The current weather forecast doesn’t look too bad.
On conditions, one would hope that groundstaff at Hampshire have resolved to keep back a fresh pitch for this international fixture, even at this late stage in the year, and the recent matches played on this ground in The Hundred might provide further clues.
In a tournament where the general trend was for ball to dominate bat, particularly the new ball, this ground actually proved one of the better venues for runs, particularly in the powerplay.
In four fixtures here, home team Southern Brave posted powerplay (25 balls in The Hundred) scores of 50-1, 45-0 and 39-0, while Trent Rockets made 43-0 and Welsh Fire 44-1 on their respective visits to Southampton.
The best time to bat could again be in the powerplay, then, made up of six overs or 36 balls in this format. With that formidable top four already mentioned, Australia in particular look well placed to take advantage.
As such, I’ll be betting AUSTRALIA TO SCORE OVER 56.5 RUNS IN THE FIRST SIX OVERS at 5/6.
Posted at 1035 BST on 11/09/24
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