After a largely unsuccessful series against South Africa, the Australian summer against India will kick off this week with a three match T20 series. The three T20’s will be played on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday this week before the four match Test series gets underway on the 6th of December from Adelaide Oval.
We take a look at the first T20, scheduled for 6.50pm this Wednesday night from the Gabba and give our betting tips below.
Australia vs India 1st T20 Betting Tips
The one off T20 against South Africa was reduced to just 10 overs per side after rain delayed the start of the game on Saturday night. South Africa batted well to set a total of 108, which proved to be 21 runs too many as the Australians managed just 7/87 off their 10 overs.
Glenn Maxwell was the sole contributor in the Australian innings, posting 38 off just 23 balls to give the Aussies a slight chance before ultimately being dismissed by Lungi Ngidi, who picked up two wickets in the win.
Australia will enter the three-match series with the same squad as the one that lost to South Africa on Saturday night and Victorian Aaron Finch will once again captain the side. The batting line-up, filled with perineal Big Bash stars, has copped a lot of criticism over the past few days after failures in both the ODI series and the one off T20 against the Proteas.
Aaron Finch, Chris Lynn, D’Arcy Short, Glenn Maxwell, Ben McDermott and Marcus Stoinis look likely to make up the top six in the first T20 at the Gabba while Alex Carey remains the sole wicket-keeping option. With no other front-line batsmen named in the squad, it’s likely that the top seven will be given every opportunity to perform over the three matches.
Andrew Tye, Jason Behrendorff, Billy Stanlake and Nathan Coulter-Nile all played in the T20 against South Africa but one could be omitted from the side for the opening game against India on Wednesday if the selectors opt for a spinner in Adam Zampa or Ashton Agar.
The Indian squad will be led by four dominant batsmen who all rank inside the top 16 in the world T20 rankings. Superstar Virat Kohli will captin the side and be joined in the top order by Lokesh Rahul, Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Darwan, who between them, have ammassed over 6,000 international T20 runs between them.
Lokesh Rahul top Indian run-scorer
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India will be coming off a 3-0 T20 series whitewash against the West Indies earlier in the month in which they scored over 180 runs in two matches and chased down their opponents score in just 17.5 over in the other game. The bowling attack led by seemers Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvenshawr Kumar and Khaleel Ahmed were fantastic in the series and along with spinner Kuldeep Yadav and all-rounder Krunal Pandya, the Indians pose a bowling attack to match the dominance of their batting line-up.
The Indian batting line-up is a force in any format of the game but particularly in T20’s at the moment. They are currently the No.2 ranked T20 team in the world behind only Pakistan and their top four, led by Rahul, who averages a ridiculous 47.18 and Kohli who averages 48.88 in T20I’s is near unstoppable. With the Australian batting line-up currently suffering some major issues, we think the Indians take this series comfortably, winning the first game at the Gabba along the way.