India v England Prediction: Chakravarthy carrying our money again in 3rd T20i

India host England in the third of a five-match T20I series on Tuesday in Rajkot with a start time of 13:30, the match being broadcast live on TNT Sports 1.  

Jamie Pacheco is in decent profit after his 4/1 top bowler pick dead-heated in Game Two and has two more picks for this one as he takes us through his India vs England Predictions for Tuesday's match...

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

India  

India were certainly tested in the second match, needing an extremely mature and streetwise knock from Tilak Varma to get them over the line, the Mumbai Indians man scoring 72 off 55 that was actually a much better innings than it at first sounds. It's also a reminder of India's strength in depth that a player who is rarely mentioned in international cricket can play like that.   

That they weren't chasing another 15 or 20 more runs was down to another strong display with the ball and a big part of that was our man Axar Patel (2-32). He took two but unfortunately so did our pick from the first game, Varun Chakravarthy.  

That means we 'only' got paid out at 2/1 rather than 4/1 and can consider ourselves quite unlucky that Betfred's rules state that if two bowlers take the same number of wickets, it's dead-heated. Patel went for less runs so with other bookies it would have been a straight winner but on another day, I'm sure the rule will work in our favour.   

Nitish Reddy was unlucky to be dropped for that second game given he didn't bat in the first match and didn't have a bowl either but could come in for Ravi Bishnoi here if they decide they don't need a third frontline spinner.  

We still wait for Mohammed Shami's return after a long absence, but we may have to wait for the fourth game to see him in action.  

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

England 

At least they made it a tighter game than the first one, though you could argue that only another fine knock from Jos Buttler got them into a position where they had something to defend. What happens when the skip doesn't fire?  

Jamie Smith was good for his 22 off 12 on T20I debut, showing the same fearlessness he's displayed in Test cricket. He could well be their long-term number six in this format.  

Brydon Case continues to impress after taking 3-29 while Adil Rashid was extremely economical, conceding just 14 runs off his four overs.  

The Jamie Overton enigma persists. Five with the bat, expensive with the ball. How many chances is he going to get? Rehan Ahmed might be in contention to come in for him though it would leave them a bit light on batting. Or else they could bring back Jacob Bethell and get him to bowl a couple of overs if needed.  

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

Pitch and conditions  

Rajkot is a ground with a slight toss bias: seven of the last 12 have been won by the chaser, with dew the main factor in that, given there tends to be plenty of it in day-night games.   

So, England's best chance might be to win the toss and choose to chase, through quirky character that Indian skipper Sky is, he may decide to bat first anyway just for the hell of it.  

This is a good wicket, so 170 should be seen as a bare minimum batting first.   

India vs England 3rd T20i Odds

India are 4/9, implied probability of 69.2%, England are 7/4, which is 36.4%.  

There are two possible strategies here. The first is to consider that's a value price on England, back them pre-toss and hope they win the coin flip and get to chase.  

The second is to wait for the toss and if England bat first, hope for a fast start from the England Top 3 and try to get odds of 4/6 or so on India, in live betting.  

That dew could make a big difference, so both strategies are based around siding with the chasing team.  

India Top Bowler market    

I'd be lying if I said this was a match with plenty of great value betting opportunities across several markets: it's not.  

So, what we're certainly not going to do is eat into our hard-earned 2.5 points of profit for the Series just for the sake of it. Instead, we're going to risk 1.5 points and either build on that profit, or at worst still be up after the first three games.  

And we go back to Chakravarthy at 3/1. He won in the first match and dead-heated in the second as we know, so has been the stand-out bowler in the Series so far, further improving on what is already an excellent T20I record.  

Obvious as it sounds, the fact he always bowls his four is a big plus point because given runs conceded don't count (as we know only too well), it's a case of the more you bowl, the better your chances of winning this heat. Chakravarthy it is.