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.

Bangladesh comfortable against India

In the past one month or so, there have been three test series' namely the ones between South Africa & England, Australia & Pakistan and India & Bangladesh offlate. As expected, the winners were South Africa(morally), Australia and India respectively. Coincidentally, the three winners mentioned belong to the top three positions in ICC's test cricket ratings. However, the performance of the three winning teams do the opposite of what the ratings has to say. The top rated India have a last gasp victory against Bangladesh, the Proteas who are rated at the second position were better than India, first for coming close to winning matches on 2 occasions and winning the fourth test rather convincingly.

And Australia, who are placed at number 3 finished off their test series victory in style by (needless to be said) a 3-0 margin against Pakistan, with the second test victory being the highlight of them all. South Africa and Australia were hosting their opponents and India to be different was hosted by Bangladesh, which need not be highlighted specially. The 3^rd test between Australia & Pakistan and the 4^th test between South Africa & England ended in just 4 days while the one between India & Bangladesh went until the fifth and last day. All expectations turning upside down.

All would have kept their finger crossed regarding the series' between South Africa & England and Australia & Pakistan regarding the days the respective teams would emerge victorious. But, regarding India & Bangladesh, expectations regarding India drawing off a win well before 5^th day, which went on till the end of the 4^th day (which still was less than 5 days though). South Africa beat England by an innings and so would have Australia had Ponting imposed a follow-on. But, that was not-to-be regarding India. India should have beaten Bangladesh by an innings. Luckily, atleast India went on to win by 10- wickets.

India needed the efforts of the age old Sachin and Dravid to post a big total against a team which should have seen Dhoni resting the seniors and playing some younger talent. On the bowling part, a 10 year experienced Zaheer khan had to bail out India in the second innings, which should have been done by some Murali Vijay. Top scorer of the match turned out to be Bangladesh's Tamim Iqbal who scored 151 compared to Sachin's 143. Dhoni was forced to hand the ball to Sehwag & Yuvraj who were less an option in tests. One has to wonder as to what would have been the situation had India faced some stronger teams like Pakistan or England? And what if Dravid, Sachin & Zaheer not been in place?

One side of the coin also suggests that India might have taken the Bangladeshis lightly for which they had to compromise with a 10 wicket victory, which would have otherwise been an innings win. Also, Laxman and Sreesanth had to make a return trip sooner than their team mates that disturbed the combination. But, since the start of the tri series, one thing that is to be noticed is that Bangladesh have been comfortable facing India than any other team (Sri Lanka in this case).