England makes much of the last option

Finally, the Alistair Cook led England team could now breathe free with his team eventually grabbing a victory from the hosts - Bangladesh when they beat the same by 9 wickets at Dhaka yesterday. This was a sure victory for England no matter how bad the players fared. But, rather than calling this a victory for England, this can be referred to as a Bangladesh's loss or a lot of compromise from the English side which saw them settle for a 9 wicket victory when they should have won both the matches by an innings. However, this victory has to be a welcome one for they didn't lose or settle with just a draw.

England had won the first test at Chittagong by 181 runs which should have alerted them for taking the hosts for granted in case they did so. That was the match where Alistair Cook had to opt to bat once again despite having a lead of more than 300 runs in the first innings. This was the moment when Alistair Cook made it to the record books for the wrong reasons when he became the first captain not to have imposed a follow on upon Bangladesh despite having a chance to do so. Even that match should have been won by England by an innings and not by few runs as was the case.

Anyways, that apart, coming to the Dhaka test, if not for the 9 wicket victory, England had nothing else to take home. The other fact that England would be happy is that their spinner Graeme Swann leaped to the second position in the latest ICC test rankings for bowlers, no matter how he achieved this. Luckily, he was also awarded the man of the series when there were likes of Tamim Iqbal and Shakib Al Hasan. The man of the match was awarded to Shakib Al Hasan for his 4 wicket haul in the first innings which is needless to be said.

In the beginning, it was clear on the first day's play itself that there would be a fourth innings when Bangladesh put up a massive total as per their standards when they piled up 330 runs on the first day which went on to become 419 when the tenth Bangladeshi wicket fell. And then, there was some face saving work done by the English batsmen when they surpassed the 419 runs when they piled up 77 runs more than what the hosts could afford. Atleast then, England should have come back strongly upon the Bangladeshi batsmen which still was not the case when the Bangladeshi batsmen in their second innings also scored a total of 285 runs which was far ahead of their standard.

Finally, atleast a 10 wicket victory should have been made possible which still didn't happen. And, the last option was just to win in whatever way they could which they eventually did. Well England, Ashes are due in less than a year from now onwards.