Save English cricket campaign

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts that England are at present the only team not to have lost a game to any of the non test playing nation and also against Bangladesh. But, with every encounter against a minnow like Bangladesh, England are found coming up with a performance that is just slightly better than a defeat. None of the remaining 8 nations would have as many close encounters against minnow teams as England might have had. May be West Indies could well be excluded from the list. This is the 2^nd time in a row that England are facing such a drought in one day cricket against Bangladesh.

England won the 2^nd one dayer against Bangladesh by just 2 wickets which speaks for itself regarding the caliber of the English team. And the victory was possible due to the fact that there was a batsman in Morgan on side who held the nerves firm for England despite wickets falling from the other end. Without a batsman on one end, victory would have been far from question for the English team. There were five batsmen from the English side who returned back to the pavilion after scoring single digit scores. The English side lost 8 wickets compared to 6 from the Bangladeshi side.

Such a scenario occurs in games where there are two strong teams battling it out there. Like it happened in the match between Australia and Pakistan in the group stage of the ICC Champions trophy last year. This is in a way worse than a defeat when a team that is expected to win in a one sided manner gasps for the same though I have cited this as 2^nd best to defeat earlier here. One has to question whether it was England indeed who made it to the semi finals of the ICC Champions trophy last year and were they the ones who beat the Proteas 2-1 on their home ground.

Had it been the Bangladesh who had won the match in this fashion, the world of cricket would have been in full praise for Bangladesh but this may not be the case with England. The only positives for England lied in the area where the man of the match award went to Eoin Morgan who belonged to the England side unlike in the last game where the man of the match was a Bangladeshi batsmen in Tamim Iqbal. And some mature decision from Alistair Cook meant in going in for 3 bowlers who bowled 10 overs each unlike the lone bowler who bowed 10 over in the first encounter.