Australia vs England Prediction: Abbott can shine in the absence of the Big Three

It’s Australia against England in the fourth match of the Champions Trophy on Saturday, start time of 09:00 with live coverage on Sky Sports Cricket.

Jamie Pacheco can’t decide on the match winner, so a Price Boost selection and an Australian top bowler bet are on his radar. Here are his Australia vs England Predictions... 

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

Australia

You should never rule out Australia in a World Cup. They have the players, nous, belief and confidence to win the battles within battles at key moments of the game, never know when they’re beaten and once they get to the final, they generally win it. Having said that, this might just be the World Cup where the stars aren’t aligned.

Speaking of stars, how’s this for absent ones? Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitch Marsh miss out through injury while Marcus Stoinis was a late call-up only to decide out of the blue, he was retiring from ODIs.

That’s a lot of big gaps to fill and this time round, the replacements are good players with some international experience, not world-beaters.

Glenn Maxwell will be key as the middle-order disruptor, gun fielder and handy off-spinner, Alex Carey is an excellent player of spin, Sean Abbott a very underrated bowler in all conditions and Adam Zampa a consistent wicket-taker over the last decade. The brilliance of Travis Head and the (somewhat ugly) mountain of runs from the bat of Steve Smith, we all know about. It’s how the other members of the team perform that causes concern.

Possible XI: Head, Fraser-McGurk/Short/Inglis, Smith, Labuschagne, Maxwell, Carey, Hardie, Abbott, Ellis, Zampa, Johnson

England

A lot has been made of England’s 6-1 thrashing at the hands of India across five T20IS and three ODIs. There’s no denying it was a pretty disappointing outcome but a few elements of it need to be taken into context. India are probably the best white-ball cricket side in the world. T20I results are somewhat irrelevant here. This tournament isn’t being played in India.

Still, they obviously played poorly and there are no big-name last-minute saviours just coming back from injury to help their cause, with the possible exception of Jamie Smith. But as impressive as he’s been in Tests, he’s still just at the start of his ODI career. I mean, he’s only played seven ODIs and is yet to get to 50.

Besides, he’s coming in, but they’ve lost Jacob Bethell along the way.

Jos Buttler, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid and Joe Root provide the real quality.

They’ll need all of those to be at their best to negotiate their way out of a very tough group. England have already named their XI, with Smith a surprise choice to bat at three, so at least we know who’s going to play and bat where.

Possible XI: Salt, Duckett, Smith, Root, Brook, Buttler, Livingstone, Carse, Archer, Rashid, Wood.

Pitch and conditions   

It’s helpful that two matches were played here at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore over the last couple of weeks, so we should know what to expect.

New Zealand defended 330 with ease against Pakistan with the Kiwis then chasing South Africa’s 304 with eight balls to spare.

But teams don’t always get to 300 batting first here. In fact, the average first-innings score here is 290 over the years. It’s hard to know what to do here for the skipper winning the toss but Australia generally prefer runs on the board so that’s what they’ll probably do if the toss goes their way.

Australia vs England Odds

Australia are 8/11, with an implied probability of58%, England are 11/10 (47%).

Australia’s biggest problem is a load of their best players being injured, England’s biggest problem is they don’t have a particularly good crop of ODI players to begin with.

I suppose you could make a case for Australia on the grounds they bring their best to World Cups whoever is in the sides and that they have fine record against England in this format in recent years. But the fact they’re slight favourites is telling you that anyway. On we go.

1 pt Price Boost: Both Teams to Score 300+ Runs @ 4/1

A good starting point is that both teams score 300 runs at a boosted 4/1, originally 7/2. 300-plus was very much on the cards in that recent Tri-Series despite the fact we pointed out that’s a bit above the average first innings score.

The main reason we like the bet is that we like these two sides’ batting far more than their bowling. Head, Smith, Maxwell, Root, Buttler and Brook are all players capable of scoring a century in any ODI, in any conditions, so if a couple of those manage it, we’re almost halfway there to our bet copping.

1 pt  Sean Abbott to be Australia Top Bowler @ 7/2

If you’re an Australian fast bowler aged around 29-33 and your surname isn’t Starc, Cummins or Hazlewood, you can consider yourself pretty unlucky that you were born at roughly the same time as those three. It’s somewhat freakish that three world-class bowlers with somewhat different skillsets yet similar levels of (huge) ability have been around for near-on 15 years and have hogged the fast bowling spots in Australia XI in all three formats.

The list of high-class Australian fast bowlers who have so often missed out as a result include: Scott Boland, Nathan Ellis, Riley Meredith and Jason Behrendorff, to name but a few.

Even more freakishly, all of the ‘Big Three’ are missing this time round with injury so whereas that seriously dents Australia’s chances of winning this tournament, it does open the door for others to impress.

So, step forward Sean Abbott. He’s the Big Bash’s all-time top wicket-taker with 175, 14 ahead of Andrew Tye, testament to Abbott’s longevity, consistency and ability. Figures of 33 wickets from 28 ODIs doesn’t look that impressive but he’s actually a better bowler than that. His List A figures of 143 wickets from 87 matches paints a better picture.

Against Sri Lanka a week or so ago he took 3/61 and 1/41, a reminder of the fact he’s always in the wickets. He’ll certainly bowl his 10 here and though I can see why Adam Zampa is the favourite at 5/2, Abbott at 7/2 gets the nod for me. If he can better Zampa’s performance here, he really should win this heat.

Jamie Pacheco predominantly covers Cricket and European Football for us at Betfred Insights. You can check out his Cricket Betting Tips, along with those from the rest of the team, at our Cricket hub page...