CRICKET POLL

The key to winning a T20 tournament is all about peaking at the right time. Irrespective of how you start a season, it comes down to how the team fares across the campaign. Seattle Orcas and Washington Freedom have both registered morale-boosting wins but the key for both sides will be to start a winning streak to bolster their chances of playoffs qualification. It's still early days in the tournament but given the short span of the league phase, each game is of massive significance.

Orcas had a near-flawless performance against Los Angeles Knight Riders to notch up their first win of the season. Their bowlers did a reasonable job barring the 20th over bowled by Nandre Burger that went for 24 runs. The chase was then sealed by Ryan Rickelton's century and an unusually sedate fifty from Quinton de Kock. The duo's form augurs well for Orcas who will also hope that skipper Heinrich Klaasen gets into his act in those middle overs. Orcas' pace attack of Cameron Gannon, Burger and Zaman Khan is a potent force, given their varying strengths. Their spinners are also efficient even if not flamboyant.

In contrast, Freedom has a starry squad that lived up to its reputation in the season opener against MI New York. Led by Steve Smith, the team also has proven T20 superstars in Glenn Maxwell and Travis Head while USA's own Andries Gous along with Obus Piennar add more power to the line-up. Freedom has a batting unit that's high on power-hitting quotient although their bowling could be patchy, as seen in their washout game against Texas Super Kings where Faf du Plessis took them apart. Still, Washington does look a rounded side with a lot of firepower in their squad.

Ultimately, it will be a mouth-watering battle between Orcas' fiery pace attack and Freedom's heavy-duty batting unit that decides the outcome of the game.

When: Wednesday, July 11 at 19:30 local time, 6 AM IST (July 12)

Where: Grand Prairie Stadium, Dallas

What to expect: Surfaces at the venue has generally been good for batting, especially in the second half of the game. That has prompted captains to bowl at the toss and another similar surface could be in the offing. There could be some help for the bowlers early on.

Team watch

Seattle Orcas

Having put on a clinical performance against the Knight Riders, expect Orcas to go with an unchanged side for this contest.

Probable XI: Ryan Rickelton, Nauman Anwar, Quinton de Kock(wk), Heinrich Klaasen(c), Shubham Ranjane, Imad Wasim, Hammad Azam, Harmeet Singh, Cameron Gannon, Nandre Burger, Zaman Khan

Washington Freedom

The bowlers did get a bit of a hiding against the Super Kings but that was also a very good batting surface, as Freedom's openers showed in the four overs that they batted, going at over 15 runs-per-over themselves. Therefore, Freedom could also opt for an unchanged side.

Probable XI: Travis Head, Steve Smith(c), Andries Gous(wk), Glenn Maxwell, Obus Pienaar, Mukthar Ahmed, Marco Jansen, Justin Dill, Akeal Hossain, Lockie Ferguson, Saurabh Netravalkar