CRICKET SECOND TEST:ON ENGLAND'S last tour of Bangladesh seven years ago the then captain, Michael Vaughan, pronounced that the whole thing had been "too easy" to serve any useful purpose. That was a phrase never likely to tumble from Alastair Cook's lips, but he can draw considerable satisfaction from the fact that, after an arduous month, he has got the job done.
England won the second Test at the Shere Bangla Stadium by nine wickets with only 10 overs to spare to take the series 2-0. Informed that they must win every match on tour, England did just that. Now they will be told that they should have won them more easily.
But Bangladesh’s batting commands more respect these days, and the pitches were so turgid they drove everyone to distraction.
Cook’s exploratory month in the captaincy role has done no harm to his batting. He made a hundred in both the Chittagong and Dhaka Tests, rounding things off at the Shere Bangla with his 12th Test hundred by the age of 25, an impressive tally. It was a measured and increasingly relaxed affair, completed when he hacked a wide, low-bouncing off-spinner from Naeem Islam to the cover boundary. He finished with 109 not out off 156 balls, and then gladly stood down from the captaincy role that has forced maturity upon him.
“Andrew Strauss is our captain and I’m happy to see him back,” he said. For all that, Cook will return to the back of the bus a wiser man.
After four days of grind, England found a target of 209 in 54 overs a breeze, their fears of a final-day minefield entirely unfounded. Kevin Pietersen, who now jets off to join Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL, batted with panache for an unbeaten 74 from 79 balls, practised a few switch hits for good measure, and Bangladesh’s bowlers soon looked defeatist in his presence.
Bangladesh deserve sympathy. They have suffered two more Test defeats, their record now reading as 57 defeats and three wins in 66. But England have not impatiently brushed them aside, nor beaten them with much panache, but have needed resilience to come out on top.
Even as England headed for victory, the Test continued its sport with Jonathan Trott. He was freakishly bowled off pad and elbow in the first innings, dropped one of the simplest catches imaginable at backward point in Bangladesh’s second innings to reprieve Tamim Iqbal, and was the only England player dismissed in the run chase, banging his bat on the ground in frustration after a debatable run-out decision by the TV umpire, Nadir Shah.
Cook’s appetite for a single to cover left Trott in danger the moment Jahurul Islam pulled off a good diving stop, but the throw was slightly wide. Trott then seemed to have survived by a single frame when Mushfiqur Rahim broke the stumps, and received a thumbs-up signal from the England dressing room to tell him as much.
Because neither of the two video stills was conclusive, a not out decision seemed inevitable, only for Shah to extrapolate an extra frame from the evidence available in which he imagined that Trott was short of his ground and to press the red button on that basis. Nobody could remember when a TV umpire had made a decision based not on video evidence, but on an arithmetical calculation based upon it.
Trott, an intense soul, is unlikely to sleep until he has pored over regulations to see if he has been wronged. As his dismissal brought in Pietersen, England might view it all as serendipitous.
Scoreboard
SECOND TEST (in Mirpur)
OVERNIGHT: England 496 (Bell 138, Bresnan 91, Trott 64, Prior 62; Al Hasan 4-124). Bangladesh 419 (Iqbal 85, Naeem Islam 59 no, Mahmudullah 59, Shafiul Islam 53; Swann 4-114) and 172-6 (Iqbal 52).
Bangladesh Second Innings
Shakib Al Hasan st Prior b Tredwell 96
Islam c Trott b Tredwell 28
Naeem Islam c Pietersen b Tredwell 3
Abdur Razzak lbw b Finn 8
Rubel Hossain not out 0
Extras (lb3 w5) 8
–––––
Total (102 overs) 285
Fall of wickets: 1-23, 2-86, 3-110, 4-130, 5-156, 6-169, 7-232, 8-258, 9-275.
Bowling: Broad 16-2-72-2, Bresnan 13-2-34-1, Tredwell 34-8-82-4, Finn 9-3-21-1, Swann 30-7-73-2.
England Second Innings
A Cook not out 109
I Trott run out 19
K Pietersen not out 74
Extras (b2 lb4 nb1) 7
––––––
Total (1 wkt, 44 overs) 209
Fall of wicket: 1-42.
Did not bat: Collingwood, Bell, Prior, Bresnan, Broad, Swann, Tredwell, Finn.
Bowling: Shafiul Islam 6-0-22-0, Abdur Razzak 15-0-67-0, Shakib Al Hasan 8-0-31-0, Mahmudullah 7-1-38-0, Rubel Hossain 4-0-26-0, Naeem Islam 4-0-19-0.
England beat Bangladesh by 9 wkts
