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England prepared for red hot Indians in Champions Trophy Final

| 22.06.2013

Home advantage could prove decisive for England in the final of the ICC Champions Trophy against India and the 6/5 available on the host nation landing their first ever 50-Over format international trophy looks extremely tempting.

With the skies over Edgbaston likely to be cloud riddled, increasing the chances of the ball-from-hand to swing, perhaps it is sensible to adopt a ‘horses for courses’ type logic and back the English players to shine under English conditions.

Unbeaten in the competition, there is no doubt about India’s talent or point in quibbling why they start the game as the bookmaker’s favourites but, given the anticipated conditions, England’s bowlers could tear MS Dhoni’s men to shreds.

The 5/4 about the prolific Jimmy Anderson, who spearheads England’s attack, to dislodge more batsmen in the match than India’s less experienced Bhuvneshwar Kumar makes serious appeal.

Kumar is one of the hottest young talents in world cricket, with an extremely bright future ahead of him but, arguably, is not yet anywhere near the class of Anderson who has thus far snaffled ten tournament wickets compared to the Indians haul of six.

Sticking with the home advantage theme, given the amount of man-hours spent in the middle at county level, there are no batsmen on show that understand the Edgbaston track better than Warwickshire duo Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell.

Both should enter the equation if contemplating a top runscorer wager, although Trott’s claims are clearly more obvious than his teammate’s, on the back of his 82 not-out in England’s semi-final victory over South Africa.

That knock was outstanding, and the slow and steady nature about the way the cool-headed Trott consistently accumulates runs, could be just what is required in the pressurised situation of this tournament decider.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing

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Author

Andrew Lisemore