England has booked a semi-final position in the Champions Trophy, the mini World Cup which is taking place in rainy Blighty right now. And the English team are beginning to answer every question asked which suggests it could be time to get with them.
The team is still available to back at decent numbers. Multiple green listed bookamers all offer +550 about the hosting nation celebrating with the trophy. At those best odds, England is no longer the jolly – a position held for at least six months.
And it is curious as to why it has been displaced. India is the new favourite at +300 with Bet365. Now, it is true that it is the Indian team which is the holder of the prize. But let’s be clear – India has not yet booked its place in the semi-finals. England has.
We are not saying that India will not make it to the last four, we’re just pointing out that it seems perverse for a team which is a guaranteed one win away from the final, instead of two, to be priced up bigger.
India are strong and we expect a team which boasts the batting talent of Virat Kohli to go very close indeed. Kohli is a God in this format and any team which has to go head-to-head with him in a chase will fret.
Kohli and his team-mates were impressive, on the face of it, against deadly rivals Pakistan. But if you watch that match more closely you will notice that Pakistan were just not at the ballpark. They were awful and even leading cricket analyst site, Cricinfo, weighed in with the criticism, calling it an “appalling performance”
Even Australia are given the same odds as England with +550 available on the exchange Betfair. Now that is darn right weird. Australia is not certain to qualify after two of the matches were washed out by rain – to New Zealand and Bangladesh. Which team do they have to beat to get a last-four spot? England.
That is a real tough task. As we said, England has been impressive. Coming into the tournament there were doubts about the bowling attack. It is hard to criticise now. It defended 311 against a strong Kiwi batting line-up on a good wicket in Cardiff and it is beginning to look as though they will end the wait for a first ICC 50-over tournament win.
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