NZ vs England Test Series

[bigmoose]

Ok, i might be a bit early (5th March start?) but i might be away for a week soon.

Eng are 1.82 (Betfair) to win this series. Anyone got any ideas/suggestions yet on pre-series bets? KP at 3.75 and Sidebottom at 3.00 are the favs for Top Eng bat/bowler.

So all-in-all i'm not seeing huge value in much at the mo, especially as Eng still having a bad session or a bad day at regular intervals. But i can't see NZ batsmen outscoring ours over 2 innings ever. 2 of the 3 wickets are meant to suit Harmy. Wonder if he'll turn up tho. Unlikely, especially as he's a rhythm bowler who needs full fitness and lots of overs under his belt.
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Steve

[fairfranco]

one of my favourite england bets has often been to Lay Pieterson for top batsman, it's often been very successful and ususally profitable!

i guess top batsman overall has a resonable chance though.

could be a close series and New Zealand will certainly take some confidence from their one day series win but with their weak bowling attack England should be able to punish them when not restricted for overs.

I think England will win the series and 1.82 is a fair enough price for it.

[thetitan]

I really don't rate NZ as a test side...they're essentially one-day specialists and have only played about 20 tests in the last 3 or so years.

England have a pretty good side, I feel that as we saw in the ODI series, the talent is definitely there, and they also have good experience as well.

The only thing that seems to trouble England is over-complicating things.

Over 5 days, I'd expect a series win for England...if not, they really need to re-consider having Peter Moores as coach.
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Corner vulture

Jimmy Bullard for England Captain. Seriously.

[spencer]

Pieterson has been top batsman in 5 of the 9 series he's competed in for for England! Probably should be odds-on.

[fairfranco]

right well now it's started!

Strange odds I felt at the start with the draw favourite followed byNew Zealand after winning the toss and choosing to bat. England priced at 4.5 seemed too high to me.

NZ got off to a slow start but then startign picking up and were soon hitting at 4 and over. Bell (England) picked up an injury early on in the field which could be a break to hand or fingers. Hopefully for England it's not but I've not seen the results of his scan to know what the outcome was.

Bell (NZ) was the first wicket to go but New Zealand kept going ok from there batting resonably well. After Fleming fell at 108 they haven't had any major partnerships though until Mccullum but he is now out.

NZ are 282 for 6 with Taylow on 54 and Vettori on 4. If England can finish them off early on tomorrow they'll be in an excellent position, less than 400 would be ideal.

I've not seen any bad weather reports so why the draw was odds on on day 1 i'm not really sure, my bets were to Lay the draw and back England but then I also layed NZ when they hit 3.0.

England hit 9's at one point which would have looked very tasty if i'd been up and watching!!

[princecap]

franco, how can you check what 'odds' a team hits during the passage of play?

[thetitan]

liquidity has been a problem on the first day, but forgetting about that, NZ are still far too low at about 2/1, a definite Lay for me. I'm in the england 'draw no bet' position as I really would be shocked if NZ got close to winning this.

NZ are a significantly lower price than their SP, which is quite surprising considering they've had a very average day.
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Corner vulture

Jimmy Bullard for England Captain. Seriously.

[fairfranco]

Prince when on Betfair you can click on the graph icon to the left of the selection. This will show a graph of the movement in prices through the game and on the right there is a column showing how much as been matched at each price.

[fairfranco]

right, well New Zealand have batted for most of the first 2 days and clocked up a decent score of 470.

made mroe decent by the fact that over half their runs came from the 7th wicket partnership of Taylor and Vettori.

England have made a stuttering start of 87 for 2 with Hoggard and Cook out.

The game was certainly peetirng out towards a draw with a fairly placid pitch, no spin and England certainly capable of matching if not scoring similar to that of New Zealand.

The 2 wickets are a blow but England still have plenty to come with Vaughan looking decent on 44, Strauss keen to impress and Pieterson, Collingwood and hopefully Bell still to come.

The draw hit 1.33 at one point last night, presumably when England were 85 for nothing. it's now back out to 1.57, which looks to me like decent value, Englands 2 wickets at a decent guess probably came mainly down to the evening light as both came quickly just before close of play. England should pick up ok tomorrow and when they reach 300 if they are no more than 5 wickets down I see the draw being about 1.2.

[Dammo Qwirky]

i was surprised to read england are stuttering as effectively theyve only really lost 1 wicket as hoggy never contributes meaningfully anyway.

another of my annoying 'nearly bets' overnight... had a great profit lined up on second session runs, only for it to be voided for there only being 19.3 overs when 20 overs are required for bets to stand. wouldnt have minded so much of the umpires hadntve got it wrong, last wicket fell 31 mins b4 scheduled tea break so they shouldve come back out and increased my profit further!

draw will come in i guess when england are looking likely to pass follow on.
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[thetitan]

unlucky dammo, those are the most annoying ones!

draw should be a dead cert if England bat out most of day 3, only an england collapse in this innings can change things.
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Corner vulture

Jimmy Bullard for England Captain. Seriously.

[fairfranco]

WAKE UP WAKE UP!!!

Somethings happend in this test match!

Firstly England failed to produce a decent enough score, losing Collingwood before lunch then did as much as the lower order always does when they came back out, producing just 1 run for 3 wickets to close out on 348.

New Zealand then came back out with Bell going first again, this time for a duck on the third ball, they recovered after that with How and Fleming getting them up to 99 before How went out. It then all went wrong for NZ losing 5 wickets for 20 runs as Sidebottom got a hat trick to make up his 5 wicket haul and Panesar netted 3 wickets.

Now the position.

New Zealand are on 147 for 8 with Vettori and Patel at the crease. Vettori can probably bat half the day out on his own but Patel and Martin to back him up he might not get much time.

England will then have most of a day to chase down somewhere between 269 and 300.

The question is after the absymal display of 2 runs an over for the last 2 days can England step up their run rate without getting bowled out to win the test? Or will they bat out a slow run draw?

It's a tough call and I wish I was fully traded out now! The draw hit sub 1.1 last night but I missed it, then traded out about half my stake at 1.11 but the rest I had set at 1.07 which never got matched.

Current prices on Betfair:

New Zealand - 4.3
England - 9
Draw - 1.52

This is very tough to call as I think it could really depend on Englands mentality and how their first session goes, surely if they do lose a couple of early wickets they'll close up and kill the game off for a draw. I think New Zealand are therefore a pretty good Lay though for me i've already got enough liability on them!

thoughts anyone now the games finally woken up?