Roy wonder blows Bangladesh away
JASON Roy’s 132 off 124 balls and Adil Rashid’s four-wicket haul helped England seal an accomplished ODI series win over Bangladesh.
Roy struggled in tricky conditions in Dhaka but bloomed as his innings progressed, recording his first ton in the subcontinent and 12th overall, moving up to joint third in the all-time England list.
He shared a 109-run stand with Jos Buttler, who scored 76 off 64 balls, while there were late cameos from Moeen Ali (42 off 35) and Sam Curran (33no off 19) as England surged to 326 for seven.
After Curran took three wickets in five balls at the outset of the reply, Rashid ripped through the middle order to finish with four for 45, as Bangladesh subsided to 194 all out, and a 132-run thumping guarantees their first ODI series loss at home since 2016 as England went 2-0 up with one to play.
Curran wrapped up victory to finish with four for 29 as last year’s T20 World Cup player of the final and tournament underlined his credentials for the 50-over version in the autumn.
“I spent a lot of time here playing cricket on the sub-continent when I was younger, a lot of training camps, and I had to dig deep with those skills today and put it on the field,” said Roy.
“I needed to give myself an opportunity. In the first game I had a rush of blood and played a pretty poor shot against the spin.
“Today I wanted to make sure I batted time and gave myself the best opportunity to score runs and put a score on the board for the team.
“It was an unbelievable effort with Jos coming in and playing the way he does, we rotated the strike well together. Obviously his innings was very good and then Mo and Sam had a good knock.
“All three guys coming in and scoring as freely as they did was an incredible effort and showed a high skill. I could just bat.”
Captain Buttler added: “That was a fantastic series win, to go 2-0 up. Bangladesh are a formidable team at home so we’re delighted to get the series win.
“We spoke about ways we could improve from the last match and we really did that today. Jason Roy led that fantastically well with his batting and other guys chipping in around him and then we started well with the ball.
“These are probably the conditions we find the hardest as a team so to play like we did today was a fantastic achievement. From one to 11 the guys stood up and the standard and intensity we played at was much higher than the first game. That’s what we strive to get to.
“We’ve talked a lot in the dressing room about adapting to conditions to play a variety of ways. When we turn up in Chittagong (for the final game of the series) we’ll assess the conditions and play accordingly.
“Lots of guys are putting their hands up with great performances and that’s fantastic for the team.”