With the World Cup looming England and Pakistan fine tune their preparations with a 5 match ODI series and the first contest takes place at The Oval on Wednesday.
The World Cup gets underway on 30th May and before we look at this series, a reminder we have CWC outright betting available. Hosts England are trading as favourites at 22/10 to be crowned champions and Pakistan are a 14/1 chance. The Proteas can currently be backed at 9/1.
Click here for the outright CWC markets.
Let’s begin with a look at the squads.
England: Eoin Morgan, Moeen Ali, Jofra Archer, Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler, Tom Curran, Joe Denly, Chris Jordan, Liam Plunkett, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Jason Roy, Ben Stokes, James Vince, David Willey, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood
Pakistan: Fakhar Zaman, Imam-ul-Haq, Abid Ali, Babar Azam, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Hafeez, Sarfaraz Ahmed (capt & wk), Shadab Khan, Imad Wasim, Hasan Ali, Faheem Ashraf, Shaheen Afridi, Junaid Khan, Mohammad Hasnain, Haris Sohail, Mohammad Amir, Asif Ali, Yasir Shah
Recent Form:
England won the T20 against Pakistan at the weekend by a 7 wicket margin whilst their most recent ODI delivered a 4 wicket victory in a one off contest away to Ireland last week. England toured West Indies in February and March and the series finished all square at 2-2 with 1 match abandoned. Looking back to October last year England were 3-1 winners in Sri Lanka and in a home series in July they beat India 2-1.
Pakistan’s last ODI series was a big disappointment as they were on the wrong end of a 5-0 clean sweep against Australia in UAE in March. They lost 3-2 in South Africa at the start of 2019 and in November last year they shared a 3 match series against New Zealand in UAE 1-1 with 1 match washed out.
Recent Head to Head
The most recent meeting between the teams came in the semi finals of the Champions Trophy in Cardiff in June 2017 and Pakistan ran out winners by 8 wickets on their way to winning the tournament.
In August / September 2016 England won a 5 match series on home soil 4-1.
Overall the teams have met 82 times in this format with England winning 49 and Pakistan 31 with 2 no results.
The Betting, - Click here for all markets
England 4/10
Pakistan 2/1
Note prices quoted are correct at the time of publication but are subject to change.
Verdict:
England look hard to oppose but for a betting interest we look to 2 players who were excellent during their time in the current IPL, namely Jofra Archer with the ball and Jonny Bairstow with the bat.
Bets: Top Home Bowler, Jofra Archer at 7/2
Top Home Bat Jonny Bairstow at 3/1
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Remember you can have your own say on all this week’s matches on our discussion forum
