Twenty20 / Tobias Gourlay / 13 May 2010 /

Tobias Gourlay scratches around for reasons to back Pakistan against the tournament favourites and finds that David Hussey is not one of them.

Venue & Conditions

The tournament-wide trend for the team batting first to win has not been especially strong at the Beausejour Stadium: four of the eight teams to have batted first on St Lucia so far in this tournament have lost. The average first innings total is over 150, despite a couple of poor efforts from Afghanistan and, less excusably, the West Indies.

Team News

Despite the team's mixed results (see below), nine Pakistanis have played every match of the tournament so far. There's probably only space for one of the fast bowlers, Mohammad Sami and Mohammad Asif, alongside Mohammad Aamer, because neither of Sami and Asif have been much use to date. Fawad Alam, who was Man of the Final, Man of the Series, Best Bowler and Best Batsman in the 2006-07 edition of Pakistan's domestic Twenty20 competition, has made little impression in the middle order, but Khalid Latif's rival case for inclusion is hardly compelling. In St Lucia, which has a reputation for helping spinners, there might thus be a place for Abdur Rehman, the slow left-armer.

It seems unlikely that Australia will make any tactical changes at this stage of the tournament. They've only used 12 players so far - Ryan Harris was picked ahead of Mitchell Johnson for one match - and, even though conditions might suit him, Nathan Hauritz will probably be left on the bench again.

Match Odds

Australia weren't fancied much at the outset of this World Cup, but five wins in five matches have made them the tournament favourites. At the MCG in February, Australia sneaked a two-run win against a very different Pakistan side. At this venue 12 days ago, they beat a Pakistan side with a much closer resemblance to this one by 34 runs. Do they deserve to be [1.47] favourites for this match though?

Pakistan, the reigning champions, have won only two of their five matches so far, but have reasons to be hopeful of revenge. Michael Clarke might be more positively inclined towards T20 cricket than his predecessor as Australia captain, Ricky Ponting, but he's averaging only 12 with the bat and clogging up the top order. Saeed Ajmal is a fine spinner in this format having a good tournament (10 wickets so far). His opposite number, Steve Smith, has been targeted unsuccessfully by other teams recently, but has gone at nearly 10 an over in two previous T20 internationals against Pakistan. There's just about enough here to make Pakistan the value bet at [3.1].

Top Batsman

At the end of the Super Eights, Pakistan's Salman Butt was the competition's third-highest run-scorer. He's [4.5] joint favourite with his opening partner, Kamran Akmal, in the Top Pakistan Batsman market for this match, but Kamran's brother, Umar, is an interesting proposition at [5.1]. The younger Akmal was Pakistan's best batsman in January's ODI series whitewash in Australia, when a couple of brisk counter-attacks suggested he's not fazed by these opponents, and showed a semblance of form in making 51 against South Africa earlier this week.

Shane Watson's 81 made him top-scorer for the Aussies when these two played here a couple of weeks ago. He's been in form for a while now - almost long enough for some of us to have to reconsider previous judgments about how good he is - and is the [3.85] to win the Top Australian Batsman market again. David Hussey has much more appeal at [8.0]. The forgotten Hussey thrashed 53 from 29 balls here last time and should get a decent hit from somewhere between No. 3 and No. 5, unlike his brother, who is used to avert disaster lower down the order after top-order collapses.

Australia First Over Runs

Pakistan might not have been great over 20 overs, but they've been alright over one over. Abdur Razzaq and Mohammad Aamer have shared first-over duties and their worst result so far was the seven runs they conceded to New Zealand. In all of the four other games, they've kept their opponents to no more than five runs. David Warner managed five runs against Aamer the last time these sides met and, with Watson, has passed six only once in their five games. In this match you can back Australia to score six runs or less at evens.

Trivia

Both of Australia's opening bowlers, Dirk Nannes and Shaun Tait, are on course to beat Umar Gul's tournament record of 13 wickets, assuming, of course, that the Aussies make it to the final.

Tobias Gourlay Says: Back David Hussey at [8.0] to be Top Australia Batsman

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