Season 12 State of Origin - Game III - New South Wales v Queensland (completed)

Despite the fact that NSW have already ensured that they shall be lifting the Origin trophy this year, the final match of the series should prove to be a fascinating encounter.

As always there will be no love lost between the two sides as NSW seek to complete a series whitewash while Queensland will hope to build further on their markedly improved performance in Game 2 and spoil the New South Wales celebrations on the day.

Both sides make one change to their lineup with fit-again veteran Daniel Speirs making a return at the top of the New South Wales batting order at the expense of Tom Delonge. Delonge, who is more comfortable down the order, can consider himself unfortunate that a batsmen of his quality can be sat on the sidelines but such is the quality of New South Wales's middle order.

For Queensland <a href=http://cricsim.com/site/players.php?id=100>IA Ryabovol</a> makes a return to provincial action in place of Steve Cambridge. Cambridge struggled desperately in his two showings for Queensland this season and walks away with just a solitary wicket for the price of 222 runs. Queensland will be hoping that any notable improvement on this from Ryabovol, who is also a handy contributor with the willow, will be enough to see them over the line.

The Herald predicts that the game will be decided by Queensland's efforts with the new ball. The NSW middle order has been in fantastic form thus far and Queensland will need their bowling spearheads to make early inroads into the batting order and get up a head of steam. With Ged King a shadow of the bowler he once was; the seamers will be relied upon to do the vast majority of the damage and if they allow Daniel Speirs and Robert Cribb to blunt the potency of the new ball then they will find themselves up against it and no doubt one of Lewis, Parker, Flack, Herd and Popovic will cash in.

However, the effect of this would be two fold. If Queensland are able to restrict NSW to a below-par score then the threat of the NSW spin trio is somewhat nullified. A reduction in scoreboard pressure should mean that so long as the Queensland batsmen are patient, they can accumulate runs. There will be no pressure to score heavily against the spinners and Queensland could look to play attritional cricket and limp their way to a sizeable first innings score or forcing the New South Wales attack to do something different.

Sadly the Herald doesn't have the faith in either the Queensland bowers, to tear through the much vaunted NSW batting order, nor the batsmen, to grind out runs in the face of such an aggressive spin bowling lineup, and thus predict a NSW win by 7 wickets.