Edgbaston is the venue for the rescheduled fifth and final test match between England and India, the game gets under way on Friday and England come into the match a rejuvenated side.
This series started in August last year but the fifth test was cancelled due to Covid. India lead the the series 2-1.
Series Results:
1st Test Nottingham Draw
2nd Test Lords India won by 151 runs
3rd Test Leeds England won by an innings and 76 runs
4th Test Oval India won by 157 runs
Covid could also be a factor here but as it stands the line ups will be selected from the following squads.
Ben Stokes (c), James Anderson, Jonny Bairstow, Sam Billings, Stuart Broad, Harry Brook, Zak Crawley, Ben Foakes, Jack Leach, Alex Lees, Craig Overton, Jamie Overton, Matthew Potts, Ollie Pope, Joe Root
Rohit Sharma (Captain), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rishabh Pant (wk), KS Bharat (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Mohd Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Prasidh Krishna, Mayank Agarwal
Recent Form:
England, under new coaching and captaincy, have just completed a 3-0 clean sweep of New Zealand in a home series with Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow in terrific form.
Since the postponement of this test match India won a 2 match series at home to New Zealand 1-0. They lost 2-1 in South Africa and most recently won 2-0 at home to Sri Lanka.
Edgbaston, Birmingham
Over the course of the last decade England have played 6 test matches at this venue, winning the first 4 but losing the next 2.
In August 2018 England beat India by 31 runs at this ground
The most recent test at Edgbaston came in June 2021 and England (303 and 122) lost to New Zealand (388 and 41/2) by 8 wickets.
You can check the weather forecast here
The Betting - 5th Test Match
At the time of writing England are 10/11 to win the match with the draw at 18/5 and India are 21/10
Joe Root is 2/1 to top score for England in the first innings and Virat Kohli is 11/4 to do likewise for India
Note all prices are correct at the time of writing but are subject to change
The Verdict
There will be a good vibe around the England camp after the NZ series but it's a quick turnaround I'm shying away from the match result and looking for a couple of top first innings bat picks.
England once again had problems in terms of the form of their openers against the Black Caps and whilst Root and Bairstow grabbed all the headlines, Ollie Pope
also made runs and gets a speculative vote to top score for the hosts in the first knock.
KL Rahul is out for India, Rohit Sharma's participation was also unconfirmed at the time of writing and Shreyas Iyer might be a value play to top score in the visitors first innings.
Bets: Top ENG 1st Innings Run Scorer, Pope at 4/1
Top IND 1st Innings Run Scorer, Shreyas Iyer at 5/1
Need to open an account? Claim your 1st deposit bonus of up to R2,000 here
Note all prices are correct at the time of writing but are subject to change
Subscribe to our free weekly betting mailer which will include our best and value bets below.
