HUMILIATED!
England lose 10 wickets in a session as Cook’s men crash to Bangladesh
As England slumped to a defeat that confirmed all the worst prejudices about their struggles against spin, four friendly words took on a sinister hue: good luck in India.
If losing all 10 wickets inside a session for 64 against the ninthbest team in the world was not painful enough, England now face five Tests against the side ranked No 1. A series draw in Bangladesh will not spook the Indians. On this evidence we should expect a massacre.
The bare bones of a day that will live long in English cricketing infamy were these. At tea, Alastair Cook’s team were 100 without loss in pursuit of 273, with Ben Duckett showing he has what it takes to succeed at this level and in these conditions. An hour and 48 minutes later, they were all out for 164, with eight men having failed to reach double figures.
That is just more than the length of the average football match, taking into account added time. It really was a day when England’s cricketers might have wished they played another sport.
In a passage of play that could become a recurring nightmare before the squad fly home for Christmas, all the wickets fell to spin in just 22.3 overs. It was a meltdown of unprecedented proportions.
Yes, the pitch was unpredictable, the bowling accurate and the crowd boisterous. And make no mistake, Bangladesh deserved the greatest win in their 95-Test history. They will claim many more in the years ahead. But the manner in which England folded to Mehedi Hasan, an off-spinner who turned 19 only last week, and to a team who began this series without a Test since August 2015, ridiculed the idea that Cook will be able to repeat the memorable 2-1 victory in India four years ago.
If any consolation is to be derived from a defeat that — for all Bangladesh’s improvement — goes down as one of England’s worst, then it will be in the cold- eyed clarity of selection.
Gary Ballance has surely played his last Test innings for a while after his dismissal — an ugly leading edge to mid-off — took his tally in four innings here to 24, and his average since his summer recall below 20.
One option had been to replace him at No 4 with Duckett, creating room at the top of the order for Haseeb Hameed. But the impish brilliance with which Duckett swept and reverse-swept his way to a maiden Test fifty means he must now open in India and be given free rein to attack their spinners.
And that could open a middleorder slot for Jos Buttler, who has been kicking his heels ever since captaining England to victory in the one-day series. The fact that he has not played any red-ball cricket since the Dubai Test a year ago is a pill the selectors will just have to swallow.
stuart Broad will return to win his 100th cap when the first Test begins at Rajkot a week on Wednesday in placee of steven Finn, whose se contribution to this s defeat was 11 wicketless overs and a pair.
The spinners, though, are more of a problem. Moeen Ali has been easily the best in Bangladesh, but thee fact that Zafar Ansariri and Adil Rashid, who was lucky to collect four secondinnings wickets, managed only one maiden between them in this game summed up England’s lack of control. Gareth Batty should get ready for Rajkot.
Yet all of this will be no more than window-dressing unless England’s batsmen find a happier balance between attack and defence.
Duckett seemed to have worked out his own method, no mean feat in only his second Test. And there was a grimly determined 59 from Cook, who made effective use of the sweep.
But of the rest only Ben stokes refused to die wondering. The others poked and prodded their way to oblivion as Mehedi finished with match figures of 12 for 159 — the best by a Bangladeshi — and sshakib Al Hasan hahastened England’s demidemise with three wickets in four balls. shakib also made clear his side’s irritation with stokes, who during an increasingly tetchy morning session had got stuck into Bangladesh No 7 sabbir Rahman — an exchange that cost stokes 15 per cent of his match fee.
When shakib slid one of his slow left-armers past the all-rounder’s outside edge and on to his stumps, he reacted with an exaggerated salute, recalling West Indian Marlon samuels’ gesture to stokes during last year’s Test in Grenada. Now, as then, England were not laughing.
Their day had in any case begun badly enough. With Bangladesh three down and 128 ahead, England were still clinging on. But five chances of varying difficulty were put down, the worst when Duckett misjudged shakib’s slog- sweep off Ansari at deep midwicket.
And England made dreadful use of the DRs, twice failing to review leg-before appeals from Moeen that would have brought them wickets, and twice wasting those reviews on deliveries that did not.
When stokes was spoken to by the umpires as his frustration boiled over, it just about capped England’s morning.
Cook later suggested the officials had intervened too quickly in his all-rounder’s dispute with sabbir. But, for England, there are far more pressing concerns.
Things could be about to get a whole lot messier.