England vs Zimbabwe Predictions: Back Zak to falter in 1st Innings

England kick off their international summer with a one-off Test match against Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge, one which they're expected to win, but the four-day format of the match may just put a spanner in the works.  

Jamie Pacheco feels he has a duty based on stats to oppose out-of-form England batter Zak Crawley while Zimbabwe's real class act can provide a winner at big odds with ball rather than bat as he takes us through his England vs Zimbabwe Predictions for the match...

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

England 

If it feels like a hell of a long time since England last played a Test match, it’s because it has been, last playing a three-match Series in December against New Zealand, which they won 2-1.  

Most of the familiar names are there among the batsmen which means Zak Crawley can consider himself incredibly lucky after a last couple of years where he’s mostly struggled to buy a run in any format.  

Much the same could be said of Ollie Pope, who was quickly considered the long-time owner of the number three spot, the new Ian Bell, a future England captain and so on, but has been badly short of runs. The pair won’t have many better opportunities to find some form ahead of a big summer than this one.  

Whether skipper Ben Stokes or Jamie Smith comes in at six shouldn’t make too much of a difference but if it’s Smith, that might be a clue that Stokes is planning on getting through plenty of overs with the ball and won’t be holding back when it comes to the pace of his deliveries.  

The bowling is a very different story. Injuries to Brydon Carse, Olly Stone, Chris Woakes and Mark Wood mean a new-look attack where Gus Atkinson, with just 11 Tests to his name, will now be the attack leader. 

Announced XI:  Crawley, Duckett, Pope, Root, Brook, Stokes, Smith, Atkinson, Cook, Tongue, Bashir.

Zimbabwe  

Zimbabwe haven’t toured England since 2003 when they had a pretty impressive side that included Grant (but not Andy) Flower, Tatenda Taibu, Sean Ervine, the uber-competitive Ray Price and the late Heath Streak, who captained the side.  

Sean’s brother Craig (Ervine) is in the squad at 39 years of age and is the skipper with further experience coming in the form of all-rounder Sean Williams, who is 38. 

The big surprise is the return of Sikandar Raza (aged 39) to the ranks, who by all accounts had retired from Test cricket but couldn’t resist one last chance to play a Test in England with his career in its twilight. This guy is a real class act, averaging a half-century (9 in total) every other Test (18 of them). Don’t forget that he’s also a very handy off-spinner and though he doesn’t turn in that much, his accuracy and occasional variations can make him a tricky customer.  

Richard Ngarava and Blessing Muzarabani are the pick of the bowlers but we rarely see them pitted against the very best in this format so we’re not quite sure just how good they are at the highest level.  

Possible XI: Bennett, Curran, Welch, Williams, Ervine, Raza, Tsiga, Masakadza, Ngarava, Chivanga, Nyauchi.  

Pitch and conditions   

66 Tests have been played over the years in Nottingham with just over a third ending in draws and producing five results from the last six, the odd one out being a draw between England and India in 2021 where the weather played its part.  

In 2022 it gave us a run-fest between England and New Zealand who both scored over 500 first up before England ended up chasing a competitive score on the last day. There were more runs here when England hosted the West Indies last year with both getting past 400, with the Windies ultimately falling short in a big chase.   

So England should be good for at least 450 in the first innings but if it’s swinging and they bowl first, England’s bowlers could make some early breakthroughs and Zimbabwe may well feel they’ll do well to get to 200.  

There’s some rain forecast for days three and four but we don’t expect too many overs to be lost and England may well have done most of the damage by then anyway. However, remember this is a four-day Test, not five, so if there are any rain interruptions on the last two days, that could have a significant impact.  

England vs Zimbabwe Test Odds

England are 1/9, implied probability of 90%, with Zimbabwe 22/1 (4.3%) and the draw 5/1.  

If you’re in the business of backing short odds-on shots then let’s face it, it’s pretty unlikely England won’t come good in the end. If outsiders (Zimbabwe) are more your thing, then you might prefer to save your money for an alternative one because it really would be some upset for a side who rarely plays any Test cricket at all to come and play in alien conditions and actually win the game.  

But you’ll see worse prices this week than the 5/1 on the draw.  If England bat for longer than they need and Zimbabwe put up a good fight of their own with the bat allied with some help from the weather, it’s not impossible they run out of time to win the game.                                                                                                        

Why Zak may not have the chance to attack – Back Under 34.5 Zak Crawley first innings runs @ 5/6 

After an excellent start to his Test career where he was the poster boy for Bazball and famously creamed the first ball of the last Ashes series in England for four through extra cover, Crawley seems to have lost confidence, rhythm and the ability to build an innings. His average is now down at 30, and across 14 Tests in 2024 it was down at 27.8. 

Betfred are going 5/6 he scores under 34.5 runs and that looks a bet to us. Consider this: in his last 10 Test innings he didn’t get to 35 runs on any of those occasions while in his last four County matches his first innings scores were  1, 0, 1 and 6. In the name of fairness, we’ll point out that in each of those last three County matches he made fifty in the second innings of the match, but he’s clearly not starting well.  

Zimbabwe may struggle as the game progresses but Masakadza and Ngarava alone should present him with some problems upfront, so he may well be back in the hutch earlier than expected.  

Zimbabwe First Innings Top Bowler  

Some of the Test career strike rates among the Zimbabwe bowlers make for some ugly reading with even the more established ones like Muzarabani (43) and Masakadza (67) not exactly boasting elite numbers even considering that they're not a top side. Just to give this some context, Gus Atkinson is hardly a world-beater yet and his strike rate is 35.6. 

If Zimbabwe fail to make early inroads, they may well just turn to the experience of Raza and his accurate off-spin and it may just be that England decide they should go after him.  He may get through many more overs than the others and this could well open the door to a man who's seen it all before to take two wickets, which would could well be enough, at a decent price of 6/1, to be Zimbabwe top bowler in the first innings.   

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...