England vs West Indies Prediction: 16/1 and 50/1 shots for Top West Indies Batter for 2nd T20I

It’s England v West Indies in the 2nd T20I on Sunday. Bristol is the venue with live coverage on Sky Sports Cricket from 14:30 onwards.   

Jamie Pacheco has lost faith in the Windies as a team but not in 7/2 top bowler chance Romario Shepherd, while Russell and Motie are massive prices for Windies top bat. Let's check out our Cricket tipsters thoughts as he previews the action and provides his England vs West Indies Predictions...

*You can check out the Cricket Odds from all of our Cricket Betting markets over on betfred.com

England 

Another impressive win for England and Harry Brook must be thinking this captaincy business is all pretty straight forward,  

Whereas it was no surprise that Jos Buttler did most of the damage with the bat with a destructive 96, the star with the ball was perhaps of a slightly more unlikely nature. 35-year-old Liam Dawson, playing his first T20I for four years, returned figures of 4-20 just by reading the pitch like a book and bowling in all the right areas to rip through the West indies top and middle order. He pipped Buttler to man of the match honours.  

He didn't spin it much but subtle changes in pace and length were too good for the Windies batters on the day. Given he's also a very decent batsman and England may have uncovered (strange thing to say about a veteran we know) an extremely important  player for them for the next couple of years. But first let's see if he backs up that incredible performance with a strong one here.  

They'll want to wrap the Series up before thinking about making changes just for the sake of it so Jamie Overton and Rehan Ahmed may have to carry on waiting for a chance. Will Jacks is settling well into his new role as finisher and part-time spinner.  

Possible XI:  Duckett, Salt, Buttler, Brook, Banton, Bethell, Jacks, Dawson, Rashid, Potts, Mahmood.   

West Indies 

Another poor display from the Windies where just about the best thig you can say is that they didn't really throw it away this time, because in a way, they were never really in contention to win the game at all. They conceded 188 and were struggling from the minute they lost the first of their openers.  

Roston Chase tried to play the anchor role but a laborious 24 off 20 didn't help the cause and none of their famed big-hitters got going. Even Andre Russell only scored at a strike rate of 115.  

They're a frustrating bunch because a side packed with good spinners, big-hitters and all-rounders, many of whom have plenty of IPL experience, should be playing better cricket than this. It's true that they're missing their best player in Nicholas Pooran who was rested but they shouldn't just be reliant on him.  

A promotion up the order for someone like Gudakesh Motie, Shepherd or even Russell just to mix things up might be an idea. But basically, they just need to play better, smarter cricket.  

Akeal Hosein could come in for Chase.  

Possible XI:  Charles, Lewis, Hope, Rutherford, Powell, Russell, Hosein/Chase, Holder,  Shepherd, Motie, Joseph. 

Pitch and conditions  

We're at Bristol for this one and the good news is that the weather should be fine with less than a 10% chance of rain during the match so we should get all our overs in.  

The last T20Is played here were back in 2022 and all involved South Africa, who beat Ireland twice but lost to England a week before, with England posting a big 234/6 and defending it pretty easily.  

At domestic level, Kent beat Gloucestershire here a week ago after scoring 208 and just about defending it; so 200 first up is very possible if at least one batsman gets to 70 or 80.  

England vs West Indies 2nd T20I Odds

West Indies are out to 7/4, implied probability of 36%. We backed them for Friday's match and in one of the ODIs before that and they let us down badly.  

So as tempting as that price is at a ground that may suit the Windies' big-hitters, quite frankly, we've lost patience and faith in them. England's own good form and confidence is obviously all part of this, too.  

So instead, trying to get 2.0 on England at any stage in live betting could be the way to go, but there's no guarantee that they'll reach that price of course.  

West Indies Top Bowler  

The Windies used six bowlers on Friday with Chase and Russell bowling two each and the rest getting through their full four; and we'd expect a similar division of work here.  

There are some good bowlers in that line-up with Motie (7/2), Alzarri Joseph (3/1) and Akeal Hosein (4/1 if he plays) deserving of respect.  But the one who ticks the most boxes is Shepherd. He was the pick of the bowlers in Durham (his 2-33 good enough to win the market), will definitely play and will bowl his four here. He has been by far their most consistent bowler in this format over the past few years. Incredibly, when he plays, he wins this market 49% of the time, so you can easily see why 7/2 is a huge price in light of that.   

West Indies Top Batsman  

It's been a challenging last couple of weeks. As an example, we had Jamie Smith top top-score at 5/1, he didn't, and then top-scored the next match.  But no-one said it was easy and maybe I was guilty of showing too much faith in a side who probably didn't deserve it.  

But a big-priced winner could change all that and I'll adopt a similar approach of splitting stakes between two Windies batters as I did last time. We go in on Russell again, who just about had enough deliveries last time out to beat Lewis' 39 but fell to Bethell on 15. A promotion up to six (or five) would help our cause but even down at seven, he's capable of winning, at the same big price of 16/1 as last time.   

And we'll push the boat out a bit more on our second player. We had Rutherford last time but are switching to 50/1 chance Motie. We've already mentioned that moving him up the order to be a pinch-hitter could be just the sort of unexpected tactics that could change their fortunes and though we think it's unlikely, you never know.  

It's also not impossible everyone goes for broke and Motie bats in his usual position at 8/9 and only has 20-odd to beat. We're keeping stakes sensible here because a lot would need to go our way, but we'll give the strategy another go.