Sydney Thunder v Melbourne Renegades
Wednesday, 04:45 BST
Live on Sky Sports Cricket
It is tempting to view the penultimate match of the group stages as a mismatch. A yawning gap of 15 points separate Thunder and Renegades and there is a motivation gap. Thunder must win to move into a critically important top-two slot and may welcome back Ashes hero Usman Khawaja. All Renegades have to play for is to avoid finishing bottom of the table for a third straight season.
Second match in 24 hours for Renegades
The only snag is that, just a few minutes ago, Renegades nearly pulled off a miraculous victory chasing 183, also against a team with more to play for. At one stage in-running, their odds against Hobart Hurricanes fell from 6.25/1 to 1.091/11, but their middle-order failed to finish the job after Aaron Finch and Shaun Marsh built a strong platform.
Same old problem. This was only the fourth time they’d reached 130 in 13 matches and only the second time they’ve reached 160. As costly on this occasion was their death bowling, with 62 runs conceded in the final four overs. To compound matters, Renegades have less than 24 hours to recover from this latest disappointment.
All of this is accurately reflected in the match odds, with Thunder starting at 1.511/2. We don’t tip pre-toss selections at such short odds on these pages but it is hard to pick any holes in Thunder’s case. They won the reverse fixture by a whopping 129 run margin.
Try an in-play order on the favourites
As today’s match demonstrated, however, much can change in-running. Therefore let’s try and get higher odds in-running, by placing an order to back Thunder at 1.84/5. Beyond that, focus on the side markets.
The venue is the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where very solid trends can be identified. I can report that the Total Sixes market has wised up – 29 of the last 36 matches yielded fewer than 11 sixes; 27 yielded fewer than ten. Therefore the line of 8.5 looks right, even accounting for Thunder’s explosive nature.
Advantage to chasers and openers batting second
There appears to be a significant toss bias here. The last five matches went to the chaser, and in more than two-thirds of matches historically. That could be a slight deterrent to the aformentioned Thunder bet, but I’ll stick with it as they are a class apart.
The last four first innings totals were all under 150. In the last five matches, all won by the chaser, an opening batsman top-scored in the second innings.
Hales and Marsh for top bat honours
That bodes well for one of today’s #OddsBoost batsmen. Alex Hales hit 80 not out in Thunder’s comprehensive victory over Hurricanes here and the Englishman is enhanced to 3/1 today. Given those odds pay a clear profit over the long-term, irrespective of the ground, Hales looks good value.
The enhanced option for Renegades is Aaron Finch, who top-scored as opener in today’s match. However given the quick turnaround, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them experiment with their order and Finch has played down the order in other matches.
A superior option for them may be Shaun Marsh may be 10/3. He’s batted top-three in each of his six innings, sometimes opening, averaging a respectable 30. He’s landed this bet twice so, as in other seasons, would have returned a profit for consistent stakes at these odds.
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