The first in a run of three massive games for England takes place today in Barbados. It really is do or die for England and given the same situation in the recent CB series, they were able to raise their game. Standing in their way first up is Bangladesh. Rewind to the last time England played Bangladesh in 2005 and this match would have been all but a forgone conclusion. Now it is far from it and that is a credit to Bangladesh, who are developing into a side that is fully equipped to compete at this level.
Mohammad Rafique, Abdur Razzak, and Saqibul Hasan will be confident that they can restrict England to a below par total, especially if they can get Andrew Flintoff in against them early. However, Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood are fine players of spin and they will be looking to take advantage of the lack of variety within the spin bowling attack, all three are of course slow left arm bowlers.
Bangladesh's youthful and excuberant batsmen are mostly solid hitters of a cricket ball and Michael Vaughan will be very worried at the prospect of the likes of Tamim, Aftab and Ashraful getting stuck into the likes of Sajid Mahmood, who has done little to justify his selection so far. England need to raise their game for this one, because Bangladesh are confident, though past history has shown that the Bangladeshis are at their least threatening when they are confident.
Prediction: Time for England to pick it up. Bangladesh's overconfidence could prove their undoing as in the past.
Players to watch: Andrew Strauss and Mohammad Ashraful.
3 comments:
Erm, so that was picking it up? ;-)
We did better than South Africa against them!
True, now that means we should beat South Africa? ;-)
The bowling and fielding are relatively good.
Post a Comment