James Buttler of the Cricket Badger Podcast looks ahead to the three-Test series and finds the best bets as the first Test gets underway at Old Trafford on Wednesday.
A slightly changed England
With Ben Stokes suffering from a hamstring injury, vice-captain Ollie Pope will step up to lead the team.
Stokes is the personification of what they call BazBall, but Pope, who has only captained once in red ball cricket for Surrey, is not short of senior pros and backroom staff to help him stick to the BazBall 2.0 blueprint.
Stokes himself will be there despite not playing and England are also without Zak Crawley (broken finger) and Dylan Pennington (hamstring injury).
England will line up as follows: 1. Ben Duckett, 2. Dan Lawrence, 3. Ollie Pope, 4. Joe Root, 5. Harry Brook (vc), 6. Jamie Smith (wk), 7. Chris Wokes, 8. Gus Atkinson, 9. Matthew Potts, 10. Mark Wood, 11. Shoaib Bashir.
Sri Lanka's chances
Sri Lanka were soundly beaten by 7-wickets in their only warm-up match against a very young England Lions team. They were rolled for just 139 in the first innings. They've only played three tests in the last year, but they beat both Bangladesh and Afghanistan, and if this series in England is going to be competitive.
They'll need their experienced batters, Dinesh Chandimal, Dimuth Karunaratne and Angelo Matthews to step up. They'll also need Asitha and Vishwa Fernando (not related) and their injury-prone fast bowler, Lahiru Kamara to take their wickets. That leads me to my first bet.
James' Best England v Sri Lanka Bets
Vishwa Fernando did very well for Yorkshire in a brief county stint this summer. He's 16/5 to be the leading Sri Lanka wicket-taker in the first innings at Old Trafford.
Joe Root, as always, is my pick to be England's top batter at 10/3. He's always my pick because he's the best batter that England have. Keep it simple!
And a few weeks ago, we landed a series bet on England to beat the West Indies by 3-0. I can see this series going the same way, as long as the bad weather stays away and allows enough play. 3-0 England is 4/5, which gets us much more value than the very skinny 1/16 on England to simply win the series.
Enjoy the test matches ahead, gamble responsibly, and I'll see you again ahead of the second Test at Lord's.
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