2nd Test vs Bangladesh (day five)

Captain Cook!

So England managed to go on tour to Bangladesh and come out as expected with a white was in every format. Their ability to beat their opponents in both tests, despite the ridiculously flat wickets, was a credit to their bowlers. The two main players for me have been Swann and Bresnan, most notably the latter who had very little to assist his brand of seam bowling, but ran in and took 6 hard earned wickets at a cost of just over 30 a piece. That being said, Swann did manage to take the most out of both sides (as expected), bagging 16 scalps at 25.25.


Tredwell managed to take more wickets that Swann in the final innings of the tour, which was an unexpected surprise, taking his tally to six in the one solitary game that he played.

The thing that is nagging at me though, being the cricketing guru that I am (NOT) is that there seems to be a lack of seam bowling depth. Finn and Broad really were pretty average on the whole and they both lacked variety and imagination, as far as getting batsmen out rather than waiting for them to make a mistake. They really needed Onions as he is the gravy (sorry about that one)!

The lack of inspiration and seam depth is rather alarming as it’s only eight or nine months until the ashes down under, against an Australian team that love revenge and have a wealth of talented and nasty fast bowlers. A lot of whom have the wool over a fair few of the English batsmen!

On the subject of batsmen and captain supreme at the same time, Alistair Cooks first proper run out as captain must be very very satisfying indeed. With two hundreds in the test series (one of them a big one) and some very solid one day inning to boot, Cook may have deservedly nudged his way into the selectors minds in terms of one day selection. Not to mention becoming the future captain. I hope Andrew Strauss has had a nice rest!!

Paul