The Springboks last gasp draw against New Zealand in Wellington have seen them installed as 4/10 favourites to win the Rugby Championship with just one round of games remaining.
The match itself was competitive, but scrappy and it was strange that the team that dominated the first-half, being the Springboks, trailed at the break by a point, but yet in the half that New Zealand were on top, it was the Boks that edged it to earn the draw.
The Springboks currently sit 1 point ahead of New Zealand and 3 points ahead of Australia heading into the final round of matches. The games take place the weekend of the 10th August and Australia are hosting New Zealand, but are (+10.5) points while South Africa are away to Argentina and are (-7.5) in the early betting.
Argentina were not very impressive against Australia away this weekend, but I just can’t shake that feeling that they are going to save their best performance of the Championship for the visit of the Springboks.
It seems like just the other day the Cricket World Cup ended so this Ashes Series that starts on Thursday has had something of a low key build up, at least that is how it appears to me.
England are favoured at 9/10 to win the 5 match series with Australia 15/10 and the draw quoted at 7/1. Chris Sturdy wrote the Preview on the Goodforthegame website and he certainly expects a close encounter and has gone for the drawn series at 7/1. This of course means that at least 1 of the test matches will have to end up in a draw and with the English weather there must be a good possibility of that.
As I recover from my endeavors in the Tour de France, this is not a series I am going to get too heavily involved in, but looking at the first Test I do agree with Chris’s pick of Joe Root to be the Top England Batsman in the first innings at 33/10. Root failed to deliver against Ireland, but is still the quality batsman in what is a very impressive batting lineup.
Interestingly Chris also suggests we may not get a century in the game and has tipped that at a price of just over 4/1.
It is going to be interesting to see how the batsmen adapt after the ODI World Cup.
Twitter: @BrentGraham
This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 1 August 2019.
Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and sends a free weekly e-mail list just CLICK HERE to register