England vs New Zealand Prediction & Betting Tips - ICC World Cup

Prediction published on 11/07/2019, 18:42  by Steve Ashfield | Modified on 11/07/2019 at 19:42 in Cricket Predictions

Those of you with a long memory will remember when this 2019 ICC World Cup began. It was at the end of May when England played the first match of this lengthy tournament. Now in the middle of July, they are back again to take on New Zealand in the final. England are playing in their fourth final but the last was back in 1992. They are the worthy favourites to win this final after recovering well from their mid-tournament blip when losing to Sri Lanka and Australia. At that stage they had lost three matches but wins over India and New Zealand saw them through to the semi-finals. The opening partnership of Jason Roy and Johnny Bairstow has been vital to England and between them they have scored 922 runs in this tournament. England's batting line-up hasn't always fired in this World Cup but one more big effort will be enough to see them lift the trophy. Their performance against Australia in the last four was excellent. Dismissing Warner and Finch so early in the innings made it difficult for their opponents to post a difficult target for England to chase.

New Zealand also had a bad patch in this tournament with two poor run chases where they never really got going. They didn't bat that well against India either and had their bowlers to thank for their semi-final victory. A lot of their hopes will rest on the shoulders of Kane Williamson who tops the batting averages with 548 runs at 91.33 with two centuries and two fifties. That's more than double the average than any other New Zealand batsman. Will this be the game where star batsman Martin Guptill finally hits form? He's only scored 167 runs in nine innings and 73 of those came in one of them, so just 94 in the other eight. If he goes early again then England could well do to the Kiwis what they did to Australia. Go for England to win the trophy.