India vs England Prediction: Why Samson and Patel are carrying our money in Chennai

India host England in the second of a three-match T20I series on Saturday in Chennai with a start time of 13:30, the match being broadcast live on TNT Sports 1.  

Jamie Pacheco is in decent profit after a 3/1 winner in the first match and is looking to build on that with bets on Axar Patel and Sanju Samson. Check out his India vs England Predictions in his full match preview right here at Betfred Insights...

*You can check out all of our Cricket Odds over at betfred.com

India  

That was as impressive a win as you're going to see in this format. They restricted England to a score that was about 50(!) runs under par and then made a mockery of that total and concerns about the pitch by chasing it with 43 balls to spare; comprehensive stuff, indeed.  

With the ball, four of the five bowlers took at least two wickets and only Ravi Bishnoi went wicketless, so a real team effort.  

Thankfully for us, the one who took three was our man Varun Chakravarthy, so we had a lovely 3/1 winner there, which with the 1.5 points lost on the England top bat market, meant we ended the game 1.5 points in profit. So, a very good start to this Series. 

Abishek Sharma then came in and blasted 79 off 34 but I'm glad Chakravarthy got Player of the Match even though that wasn't a bet for us. It's easy to go out and score runs without any pressure when the bowlers have done all the hard work and chief among those giving India a low total to chase was obviously Chakravarthy.  

The batting is likely to remain unchanged, but Mohammed Shami might get a game here, with Bishnoi the most likely to give way. That said, check out what we say lower down about the possibility of Chakravarthy not playing at all in this one.  

Possible XI:  Abishek, Samson, Sky Yadav, Hardik, Tilak Varma, Nitish Reddy, Rinku Singh, Axar, Arshdeep Singh, Bishnoi/Shami, Chakravarthy.  

England 

Every team can be forgiven for a bad day at the office when it comes to execution, but what is less excusable is poor team selection.  

This doesn't look like a particularly good format for Gus Atkinson's skills, who was all at sea with the bat when they needed him to make a contribution, and wasn't much better with the ball.  

And quite what they see in Jamie Overton as an international T20 player in one of the hardest sides in cricket to get into, is anyone's guess. He might be a good pick as a hard-hitting fast medium bowling all-rounder in The Hundred or the Big Bash but I'm not sure that on Indian wickets against the very best in the business he's quite up to it.  

One option is to bring in an extra better in Jamie Smith for Overton and trust the other all-rounders to bowl four between them. Atkinson could be dropped for the impressive Bryson Carse.  

Possible XI: Duckett, Salt, Buttler, Brook, Livingstone, Bethell, Overton/Smith, Atkinson/Carse, Archer, Rashid, Wood.  

Pitch and conditions  

Chennai is another ground we know well from endless seasons of CSK playing there in the IPL.  

It's a ground where spin always plays a big role as evidenced by the fact that Ravindra Jadeja and Ravi Ashwin were so often 'spin twins' at the ground during those years when CSK were so successful in the competition.  

However, Chennai has been strangely ignored for international T20 matches with only two games being played there: India v New Zealand in 2012 and India v West Indies in 2018, so that's not much help. Interestingly, England white-ball coach Brendon McCullum hit 91 for the Kiwis to help them win the match in that 2012 affair.  

What we do know is that there isn't really a toss bias here so the flip shouldn't make too much of a difference to the outcome of the match.  

170-175 batting first could be a good score here but if it's turning more than usual and the spinners are on song, 160 first up could be competitive.  

India vs England 2nd T20i Odds

India have been cut from 8/13 ahead of the first game to 4/9, which is now implied probability of 69.2% from 62%. England are 7/4, which translates as 36.4%.  

Given what happened in the first match, you could argue that the reduction in India's price hasn't been by enough. Especially if England carry on making poor selection decisions.   

Still, telling you India should really win at Chennai isn't telling you anything you don't already know. So, we'll leave this market alone because we're certainly not trusting England as outsiders with our money just yet.  

India Top Bowler market    

Bizarrely, our pal Chakravarthy isn't listed on Betfred's India top bowler market so they either know something we don't, or it was just an omission by mistake.  

No matter because he wasn't our selection anyway, after winning for us last time.  

Shami (3/1) is listed, suggesting he's going to play but as wonderful a bowler as he is, it would really take something to out-bowl his classy team-mates after such a long time out from the game with injury.  

Instead, we like the left arm spin of Axar Patel at 4/1. He always bowls his four overs and though his record of 67 wickets in 67 T20Is is good rather than spectacular, he does seem to get better by the game.  He bowled really well to return figures of 2/22 in the first match and was threatening to ruin Chakravarthy's party (and ours) at one stage. With this being a track for the spinner here at Chennai, he should be bang in contention.