Thursday morning will see hundreds of millions of cricket fans biting their collective nails as the cricketing giants of India and England face off in Adelaide. We’ve previewed this massive game and given you our best bets for the occasion.
India vs England T20 Tips
- England to win – Evens
- England highest opening partnership – 20/21
- England top run scorer – Alex Hales – 11/4
Well that wasn’t fun to watch was it? England made what should have been a regulation run chase, into a thriller against Sri Lanka.
Having found themselves in a must win position in their final two games, due to a poor performance against Ireland and the Melbourne weather, England first despatched New Zealand, before restricting Sri Lanka to 141/8, with some clever bowling in the 2nd half of the innings.
Captain Jos Buttler and opening partner Alex Hales got the Three Lions off to an absolute flyer, reaching 75/1 off just 7.2 overs, before Buttler departed. What followed was some mindless batting in the middle overs as Brook, Livingstone and Ali all went for big shots, rather than milking the ball into the gaps, for the less than a run a ball required.
It took some clever batting from, who else, Ben Stokes and Sam Curran to get England near the target, before the versatile Chris Woakes smashed one through backward point for four to take them into the semi-finals.
Now they face an Indian side that won four out of five games and looked fairly impressive in doing so. They had a slight hiccup against South Africa and were perhaps fortunate against Pakistan but should present a real challenge for this England side.
If rumours are to be believed, it looks like the game in Adelaide will be played on a used pitch. Not the best of situations for a World Cup semi-final. India enter this one as the narrow 4/5 favourites, with England out at Evens to progress to the final.
Team news:
India should remain unchanged for this one
KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma (c), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik(wk), Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammad Shami, Arshdeep Singh
England have issues regarding Dawid Malan and Mark Wood. It looks unlikely that Malan will recover in time, following a groin strain in the Sri Lanka match and Mark Wood has had to miss some training this week after ‘general stiffness’. If he’s fit enough to bowl, he will surely play though.
Jos Buttler (c) (wk), Alex Hales, Phil Salt, Ben Stokes, Harry Brook, Moeen Ali, Liam Livingstone, Sam Curran, Chris Woakes, Adil Rashid, Mark Wood (Chris Jordan if unfit)
England to win – Evens
I predicted England to win the tournament outright and nothing I have seen has made me change my mind yet. When they fire they are simply unstoppable and seem to have gotten the knack of turning the game their way, when struggling.
Sri Lanka were running away at the start of their innings before some canny bowling from Adil Rashid, Liam Livingstone, Sam Curran and Mark Wood pegged them back to a chaseable score.
Similarly, when struggling with the bat, Stokes and Curran were savvy enough to take the singles and punish the bad ball, to get them over the target score.
India are a fine team but I think England will just have too much firepower for them here.
England highest opening partnership – 20/21
Buttler and Hales have started to form an ominous partnership at the top of the order, after a shaky start. In the last two games they’ve opened with 81 and 75 and scored the runs in double quick time.
India, meanwhile have seen a top 1st wicket partnership of just 27 in their five games to date.
England top run scorer – Alex Hales – 11/4
The aforementioned Hales is my pick for top England bat. After a slow start he’s scored 52 and 47 in his last two innings and his confidence looks to be peaking.
