India v Sri Lanka 8th Match Betting: India will miss Dhoni

ODI preview / Richard O’Hagan / 20 February 2012 / Leave a Comment

Lahiru Thirimanne may get a chance to impress up the order

"Sri Lanka are the form team of the tournament. They have the most dependable top four batsmen and seem to have finally found an attack capable of bowling sides out on Australian pitches."

Sri Lanka are the form side at the moment in this drawn-out competition and the absence of the suspended captain MS Dhoni won't help India's cause one little bit, says Richard O'Hagan.

The past week has seen the fortunes of both sides reverse completely. Sri Lanka followed last Tuesday's dramatic tie against India with a comprehensive victory over Australia, whilst India went the opposite way. Not only were they thoroughly beaten by the hosts, captain MS Dhoni picked up his second one game suspension of the year in the process.

Team News

How India deal with the loss of Dhoni will be vital. Partiv Patel will replace him behind the stumps, but is nowhere near the same batsman, especially as Dhoni has been India's form player of this series.

Virender Sehwag will take over the captaincy again, but he has been having a poor series and with Sachin Tendulkar equally out of form, it is likely that Gautam Gambhir - the one Indian other than Dhoni to have made runs in this tournament - will open with him.

Dhoni's recent pronouncement that having all three senior batsmen in the side will cost the team twenty runs may be the only thing that keeps Ravinder Jadeja in the side; the IPL's most expensive player has been very disappointing in this series and has even fallen behind Suresh Raina as the spinner of choice, it seems.

Sri Lanka may well stick to the same batting line-up as against Australia. Captain Mahela Jayawardene clearly relished the chance to open the batting and with Dinesh Chandimal in fine form as well, it seems unlikely that they will alter their XI. They played four quick bowlers in that game and are likely to stick with that, although Angelo Mathews may still be having nightmares about bowling the 49th over which allowed India to sneak back into the sides' last meeting.

Venue and Conditions

The Brisbane pitch on Sunday was a curious one, appearing to become faster and bouncier as the game went on. Couple that with the two spinners used in that game bowling all of their overs for no reward at all and you can expect to see plenty of work for the fast men, with the slow bowlers being used in a containing role - and, of course, to avoid those slow over rate fines!

Match Odds

Sri Lanka are the form team of the tournament. They have the most dependable top four batsmen and seem to have finally found an attack capable of bowling sides out on Australian pitches. India, on the other hand, seem to be tiring after their long tour and have also had the wearying experience of several close games in this competition. Despite this, Sri Lanka remain outsiders for this match and therefore represent a good bet at [2.06]

Top Runscorer

The loss of Dhoni makes the Indian batting too volatile to consider at the moment. Sri Lanka, though, have four prime contenders in Jayawardene, Tillekaratne Dilshan, Kumar Sangakkara and Chandimal. A good bet outside of this group might be Lahiru Thirimanne. He hasn't scored many runs in his three appearances (although he wasn't required to bat against Australia), but as an opening batsman in Test matches, he may well find this quicker pitch to his liking and may even be promoted to open instead of Jayawardene, if the conditions are right. He is available at odds of [7.0].

Total Run Outs

This is not the sort of market we would normally single out for a game, but in their four CB Series matches Sri Lanka have effected a remarkable eight run outs and been involved in another five when batting. That is an average of 3.25 per match, which makes the price of [1.7] on there being more than 1.5 in this game look rather attractive.

Best Bet

Lahiru Thirimanne to be Sri Lanka's top scorer at odds of [7.0]

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Sri Lanka are yet to win a game in this tournament and this could be a good chance to do just that. They'll need a big knock from their skipper Mahela Jayawardene and they might just get that, says Richard...

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Michael Vaughan: Phenomenal Dhoni to lead India to victory again

ODI preview / Michael Vaughan / 21 October 2011 / Leave a Comment

Captain's knock. Dhoni's well-paced 35 not out got India over the line in the 3rd ODI.

"If England bat first and get more than 300 they’ll once again go close but the smart money is on India prevailing again at [1.7], against an England side who still can’t come to term with the conditions and don’t seem to learn from their mistakes."

Michael Vaughan is full of praise for the Indian captain and has a few harsh words to say about England's inability to learn from their mistakes. The latter will cost Alastair Cook's men again, as India go 4-0 up.

England came much closer to winning a match than they did in the first couple of ODIs on Thursday but it wasn't quite enough.

Where did they lose the game? Firstly, in the bowling department. India bowled full and straight, whereas England were guilty of bowling short and wide far too often. Those are freebies on these wickets to batsmen of this calibre.

Jonathan Trott played really well to score 98 but when the analysts in the England backroom staff crunched the numbers in the aftermath of the match, they'll have picked up on the fact he only scored one boundary during the last 10 overs. For a batsmen who is well set on a good wicket, that's simply not enough.

And finally, and most worryingly of all, there was the fielding. Dropped catches, missed run-outs, overthrows. You name it, England were guilty of it. Which is all the more remarkable when you consider that just a couple of months ago it was the Indians who were slow and clumsy in the field and England who looked energetic and sharp.

In the end it was left to MS Dhoni to play a typical 'finisher's' role and score the winning runs with another of those wristy drives to the boundary rope. Dhoni is a phenomenal limited-overs player, arguably the best in the business. Not since Australia's Michael Bevan has a batsman been so good at pacing a run chase. He knows how long he has to play himself in, knows when to accelerate and has an instinct for where to score his runs. Dhoni almost always finishes the innings unbeaten.

But at 30 he may decide that he needs to cut back on his workload in the near future. Keeping wicket, batting in the middle order and captaining India in all three formats takes a hell of a lot out of you and he may decide to give up the Test captaincy over the next couple of years, or indeed give up the longest format altogether. We'll have to wait and see but for the time being England have to work out a way of getting him out or else this series is only going one way and that's towards a whitewash.

Can we make a case for England winning the fourth ODI in Mumbai? We said already that their best chance was to post a big score and try to defend it by taking early wickets and hope the pressure of a big run chase got to the batsmen. Well, 298 looked like an imposing total on Thursday but in the end it was a relatively comfortable chase for India, when you consider they still had five wickets in hand. If England bat first and get more than 300 they'll once again go close but the smart money is on India prevailing again at [1.7], against an England side who still can't come to term with the conditions and don't seem to learn from their mistakes.

Alastair Cook's side are terrific on green wickets at home where the ball moves all over the place. But a 5-0 loss here in India a couple of years ago, a 6-1 drubbing against Australia in January this year and losses to Ireland and Bangladesh at the World Cup are all proof they simply can't replicate that form away from England. The first thing the management need to address is the issue of the wickets they prepare back home. If they're going to play on 300+ wickets away, they need to have practice of playing on those on English soil. Get used to hitting more sixes, learn to take wickets when there's no assistance and learn to use spin to reduce the run rate. Until they do that, they're a pretty one-dimensional team.

On the plus side, Kevin Pietersen has scored 46 and 64 in his last two matches and is looking his old confident, aggressive self. A big knock from KP may not be enough to win England the match but at [5.0] he's the stand-out bet to top score for his side.

3 pts Back India to win @ [1.7]
2 pts Back Kevin Pietersen to be England top batsman @ [5.0]

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