mvaughan

As I've already said in my series preview, this should be a close contest throughout and Lord's should be no exception.

For starters it's a wicket that at first glance doesn't favour one side over the other. If the ball was going to swing it may play into the hands of England but then again if it was an absolute belter of a wicket it might have favoured Australia's top order who are arguably bigger hitters than their English counter-parts with the likes of David Warner, Shane Watson and Steve Smith all capable of clearing the boundary rope. Lord's is a good batting track but there are easier places to score runs.

England should remain unchanged for this game. They will be desperate to carry on the good work started by Alastair Cook since he took over the ODI captaincy and to win this series as a way of landing a psychological blow ahead of next years' Ashes. That means fielding their strongest side and therefore going with the one that beat the West Indies fairly easily in the two matches that were completed. Whether Tim Bresnan is a good long-term option at seven remains to be seen but that's how they'll go for the first match at least.

In many ways this should be a typical modern-day ODI wicket. 260 will probably be seen as a par score, 280 would be very competitive. My preference would be to bowl first here whilst the ball does something and then chase whatever the opposition set when the sun comes out and batting become easier. So I'd rather wait till the toss and back the team chasing than pick a winner in the match odds market at this stage.

A more confident pre-toss selection is to go with Michael Clarke to top-score for Australia. I'm really looking forward to watching the skipper in action. He's certainly one of the most pro-active captains in international cricket and I like the way he sometimes takes gambles rather than just following a pre-determined gameplan. But let's not forget what a class batsman he is as well. He'll bat at four which is a good place to come in when you're playing in England and will look to be at the crease till the end: rotating the strike, punishing the bad balls, running hard. He should be available at around 6.0.

Back the side batting second
Back Michael Clarke to be top Australian batsman @ 6.0

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