mvaughan

Mahela Jayawardene reminded us of what an outrageous talent he is with that scintillating knock at Headingley that set up a convincing win for Sri Lanka on Friday. He's obviously in great form at the minute, but he's not the only one.

I correctly predicted Sri Lanka would win at 2.4, that Jayawardene would top score for the tourists at 5.0 and that England's opening partnership would pass the 30 run mark at 2.0 before losing their first wicket. If the current England ODI side were picked on tipping results rather than cricket form I think I'd be due a recall!

The key to working out how the remaining matches in this ODI Series are going to go is assessing what sort of a wicket they're going to be playing on in the next three games. We saw that when the ball is swinging a bit because of moisture in the air or the effect of floodlights it's England who should be favourites. There's a greater margin for error and you can pick up wickets with deliveries that may not have been particularly great balls. But on a flatter, truer wicket like the one we got at Headingley, one has to bowl straighter and with greater variety to take wickets and Sri Lanka did that a lot better. It always helps when one of your batsman goes on and gets a huge score of course but another point to make is that the likes of Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara and Angelo Matthews were a lot more resourceful than England's top order when it came to finding gaps in the field and playing improvised shots. As a rule of thumb we can say that the better the wicket for these remaining ODIs, the bigger a chance Sri Lanka have of winning.

One thing England need to think about is the role Jonathan Trott plays in this side. You can't drop a guy who averages in excess of 50 in 50-over cricket but he's simply not scoring quickly enough and if he's going to play, England need to do one of two things. Either Alastair Cook or Craig Kieswetter need to be extremely aggressive when they bat with him or he needs to drop down to number four and let Kevin Pietersen come in at three and make better use of the fielding restrictions in the first 10-15 overs. Plenty for Alastair Cook and Andy Flower to think about over the next few weeks.

My gut feeling is that Lord's will be another good batting track and we've already seen how that gives Sri Lanka the edge. For my money they should be marginal favourites so we simply must take the 2.3 about another win for Tillekeratne Dilshan's men. I don't think we'll get quite as big a first innings total as we got at Headingley but if someone gets themselves in, there's certainly the potential to go on and get a century. For England top scorer I'm going to go with Craig Kieswetter this time.


Recommended Bets:

Back Sri Lanka to win at 2.3
Back a century to be scored at 2.4
Back Craig Kieswetter to be top England batsman at 5.5


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