Cricket
2008-07-07 - Durham vs Yorkshire
A Sports Betting Pick by chappers
Twenty/20 Quarter Final
Riverside, July 7th 17.10pm Live on SKY
Durham
After winning the Friends Provident Trophy last season and also winning the Pro 40 Divison Two, I felt that finally after only being a county club since 1992 that Durham had made it to the big time and no longer would they suffer in the world of cricket. Yet Twenty/20 had always been an awful tournament to watch if you were a Durham fan as they could only be described as being rubbish and the dream of making finals day just seemed so far away.
However the 2008 season came along and this has been a totally different ball game for Durham and we find ourselves unbeaten in the tournament this season and this from a team who if memory serves me right had managed to win a handful of games since the first ever Twenty/20 game. So this season has come as a bit of a shock and good see the team make finals day in Hampshire.
Durham topped the Northern Division winning six of the ten games played and only losing the once when they lost to Nottingham by 23 runs. They had two games that were non-results and one game, which was against Yorkshire, saw the game drawn when Durham hit a six of the last ball.
Key Players Batting: DM Benkenstein 20/20 Ave 44 and P Mustard 20/20 ave 31
Key Players Bowling: SM Pollock and SJ Harmison
Yorkshire
As a kid growing up and not having a first class team of our own in the North East it was Yorkshire who you would look out for and while I never saw them play live, I did try and catch any game that had them on the TV, but of course back in those days we didn’t have the sky revolution and there was nowhere near as much cricket as there is now. Anyway once Durham achieved their first class county status back in 1992, Yorkshire changed from being a team who you sort of supported to one that are now the nearest rivals to Durham.
This season Twenty/20 saw Yorkshire make the quarter finals as being one of the two beat placed third placed teams. They had to beat Nottingham in Nottingham for this to be achieved and they managed to do this quite easily after being set a target of 137 they chased this down with 12 balls to spare and won the game with 137 for the loss of only 1 wicket.
The overall record in the Northern Division for Yorkshire was that they won five out of their ten games, losing three times and also having one no result and of course the tie with Durham.
Key Players Batting: A McGrath 20/20 average 56 and JA Rudolph 20/20 average 27.
Key Players Bowling: RM Pyrah and D Gough
Verdict
The bookies have Durham as firm favourites in this game at a price of 1.57, however while I agree that Durham should win this game, I think the price is a little low for a team who are unbeaten at home but in the two games they have played v Yorkshire in this tournament this season one game was a tie and at the Riverside Durham won on the D/L and while even without D/L you would have thought that Durham would have went on to win after setting Yorkshire 163 to win after their Twenty overs and Yorkshire finished on 49/5 after 10 overs.
I still think the price for a Durham win should be around the 1.80 mark but even at 1.57 I’m going for Durham to make their first ever finals day.
On a side note both teams were heavily beaten over the weekend in the fifty over form of the game, so it will be interesting to see how both team recover from this.
The Pick :
Durham to win this match
