England complicates its tour of Bangladesh

Even when the England team was supposed to face the Aussies for the Ashes last year, they wouldn't have broken their head over the issue as they are found doing for the series against Bangladesh. One thing that can be thought of to have caused tension among English players is the fact that they cannot feature in the initial phase of the Indian Premier League all because of the tour of Bangladesh which would hardly be on the top of anyone's agenda. But, much to anyone's surprise, this has been the biggest headache for the England team.

The first test between the two countries is due to start on 12th which is just a couple of days later. But, the worries regarding the same have started a week back when there were injuries to Graham Onions who had to sit out of the warm up match against the Bangladesh A. These test matches were needless to be played with no team in the past playing a warm up game against and in Bangladesh. It has been Bangladesh who might have played a warm up game on its tour to that country before the real challenge would have begun.

This was also the case in the recently concluded test series between Bangladesh and India where Bangladesh was a common factor and so were they hosting India. Even there, the Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni had problems in selecting the final squad combining eleven payers, with Rahul Dravid having to miss the 3^rd and 4^th days of play and Dhoni himself missing out in the first test owing to a back injury. For most of the countries, touring and playing Bangladesh is a nightmare for, the inclusion of senior players strips the team of some match practice to young legs.

And, in case young legs are included, there is hardly any guarantee of them putting up a better performance and in case they fail to do so, that would be the worst nightmare. Some of the players whose names have hardly been heard like Tim Bresnan (who has so far played just 2 tests), Michael Carberry (who is yet to play a test match) and Steven Finn - who also has a fate similar to Michael Carberry if not for the fact that he is aged just 20 and can be expected to have a good talent in him are in line for the test series against Bangladesh. I wish the England selection committee brings back Michael Vaughan, Ashley Giles etc who retired with still some fuel left in their tank, so that England don't get into the news for wrong reasons.

England saved!

Finally, England could whitewash Bangladesh who are at present the only team that is showing some sort of improvement compared to all other teams. England has to consider themselves lucky enough so that they have not yet lost to any minnow team like Bangladesh no matter how bad they have been. When England was expected to post a total in excess of 300, they were 16 runs short of the same in the 3^rd and the final one dayer at Chittagong. For the first time in the three match tournament, there were as many as 7 sixes in the England innings.

This may also be partly due to underestimating the Bangladesh team to be the same that it was some four years down the lane. Bangladesh have been found to have improved over the years much to anyone's surprise and more so when it comes to their home record though they have not yet tasted success of any sort. In the recently concluded tri series involving Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh, they despite losing all the games that they played, put up a tough fight by bringing the opposition close to 50 overs en route to their successful run chase against Bangladesh.

This was the first time in the series that England batted first. Thanks to Bangladesh who won the toss and chose to field first. It was a good planning from the Bangladeshi side no matter what the result of the match had to say. Eight out of the eleven Bangladeshi batsmen who made it to the crease came out scoring double figured scores. And if the number ten and number eleven batsmen in Shafiul Islam and Rubel Hossain respectively are excluded from the list there was just one batsman whose score was less than 10. Added to this was that Bangladesh didn't lose all ten wickets.

It has now days become a fashion for almost all the teams to bring in 7 to 8 bowlers with just one or two bowlers bowling their complete quota of 10 overs. And the fashion also has its aftermath when most of the captains make wrong decisions by tossing the ball to the wrong bowler who in turn makes a mess not only off his own bowling but also of his team. And, this time also there was a bowler from the England side in Ajmal Shahzad who bowled 9 overs giving away 55 runs at the rate of 6.11 an over.