England and Pakistan cricket moves on and we look forward to the Twenty20 international and betting on cricket.
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It is not often that the headline news on the day before the start of a one day international series is that there is no new news, but that is exactly the situation today. Even the News of the World found it hard to follow up on last weekend's revelation, managing only to run an interview with Yasir Hameed, the batsman who opened for Pakistan in the last two Tests at Lords and The Oval, in which he claimed to have been offered £100,000 to fix matches.
This is not entirely new, as players from Bangladesh to Australia have claimed in the last week that they have received approaches. In fact, the only interesting part of the whole story is that the ICC have said that that they are placing Hameed under investigation for failing to disclose the approach.
The biggest story of the day has actually been England Head Coach Andy Flower announcing that the side were entirely comfortable with the involvement of spin bowling coach Mushtaq Ahmed. Mushtaq is not only a former Pakistani international, he was named in the Qayyum Report - the report into the last match fixing allegations involving Pakistanis - as someone who should have no future involvement in cricket.
As such, his presence in the English camp has always been something of an elephant in the room whenever their objections to the continued presence of the accused players was discussed. Flower's comments do not really alter that situation and it is likely that, once this series is done and the season is over, there will be pressure upon Flower to drop Mushtaq for the Ashes tour.
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On the Pakistan side, one day captain Shahid Afridi has been very keen to try and rebuild bridges, apologising on behalf of his side for the situation which they find themselves in. They received some good news today with both Umar Akmal and Abdul Razzaq recovering from injury far more quickly than expected and now likely to take their places in the lineup for Cardiff tomorrow.
The presence of Akmal, in particular, is likely to be vital, as without Salman Butt they will need their most aggressive batsman to be on top form if they are to set England any sort of challenge.
England, meanwhile, have been cagey about the fitness of Stuart Broad. As, in the circumstances, they have little to gain from being so, it must be assumed that his groin problem is giving more concern than was expected yesterday. If he does not play, either James Anderson or Ajmal Shehzad will replace him.
England are hot favourites to win tomorrow, but the cricket odds have Pakistan at 6/4 - exceedingly generous odds for a game such as this. One area where England are second favourites is in the number of sixes expected to be hit by either side. This is odd, given that England have such reknowned hitters as Ravi Bopara, Eoin Morgan and even Paul Collingwood in their side, whilst Pakistan really only have Afridi and Razzaq who are known for clearing the ropes.
The 5/4 that Bet365.com is offering on England betting to win this particular contest are of very good value indeed.