Bangladesh Get the Sport Relief Spirit

A game that Bangladesh might have won, should have drawn but ultimately lost ended all hopes of their supporters getting anything out of a tour in which they have been at times very good and often competitive. In the end Bangladesh simply couldn't help but generously donate this Test to England and, with it, the momentum (remember that?) for the series to come in England.

Perhaps weighed down by their perpetual status as International new boys and underdogs in the end their belief leeched away. For three of the last four wickets to perish trying to take on Tredwell, on a flat deck, when not so much runs but time was the critical factor, was unforgivable. Shakib will be kicking himself for doing a Bresnan and getting stumped on 96 and will have to ask himself why his batting partners were trying to hit a spinner out of the park when occupation and partnering with him could have taken the game to safety.

In the end England simply had too too long to make the 209 they needed - so many overs that there was almost no pressure on them to take risks to achieve it. Bangladesh seemed to know the game was up and - by bowling Razzak for long periods (why?) took any pressure they had built off the batsmen.

England have looked efficient and have done all that has been asked of them on really poor decks whatever your view of the declarations and some of the tempo they have played their cricket at. There has been no pace to play with, little bounce and England have extracted all the turn in this tour. Given home advantage, Bangladesh have clearly decided to nullify any advantage that they think England might have had by giving them pitches that have done nothing. But it has spectacularly misfired. Cook, Morgan, Pietersen, Keiswetter, Prior, Bell and Colly have all got runs on the tour and even Tim Bresnan has shown that with sound technique you can stay in on these tracks and make runs. Ironically the Bangladeshis ahve shown less temperament and have not been able to equal England's batting peformances. The dropping of Ashraful and the retirement of Raqibul have compromised their ability in this and both moves look like poor management in the cold light of a comprehensive tour loss.

Will anything change in England when they tour? It's unlikely as, as much as the poor conditions here showed how ruthless professionalism can with a tour, the conditions in England in May will be feisty. Well, feistier than this. Wickman does worry that the ECB will be interested in the Tests lasting five days as it will be surprising if the first three days of any of the Tests sell out. Certainly Wickman will not be in too much of a hurry to buy tickets...

The Prediction Game

See previous posts:

Wickman predicts early mop up of England tail. England tail twitches. Tredders hits six fours.

Wickman predicts Bangla run fest on road to create 275 lead. Deshis do their best to throw it away.

Wickman confident prediction of draw. Wickman exposed as rank amateur.

Erm... England win anyone?

Should England be Stuffing the Banglas?

In Chittagong the England management and Cooky took it amidships for playing six bats and for not being gung ho enough with the declaration. Here they are taking it in the Gangulies again. This time for playing five bowlers and not batting like Sachin Tendulkar in a one day game.

The British writers are torn between:

1. Plucky, young and talented Bangladesh could pull off a stunning first win against England. England should treat them with respect.

2. England should be playing better cricket becuase they are better. But treating them with respect.

3. England should be playing really aggressive cricket against these useless youngsters who have no bowling machines or first class facilities.

All of this stuff is patronizing guff. The Bangladeshis have batted very well on a road and made 420. They then had us three down with not many on the board and two bats in who were staring down the barrel of a 300+ deficit with only Prior and a coulpe of sloggers to come with three and a half days to play. Can you imagine if England had followed on? The clamour for heads. The ridicule. The calls for the end of Bell and Trott. Rubbishing of Cook's credentials. Dear me. Okay Trotty made Chris Tavare and Boycs look like Yuvraj and Viv Richards in doing it but he's hardly England's Brian Lara at the best of times. Nobody minded when he ground it out agains the Aussies at The Oval...

All three scenarios patronize the Bangladeshis and show no understanding for the desperate situation that England were in. The very pressure put on them by the sentiment that they should roll sides like this is what causes the grind it out cricket. There's an almost desperate hope from some journalists (probably the same ones who don't like all the Saffas in the team and think Strauss and Anderson should be out there) that the wheels come off and England get embarrassed. Then the boredom would lift and they could write some really steamy words.

Already a few of them (and Goughie on Twitter) are bleating about this test being bad for the future of Test cricket and the IPL being more interesting on the other side. They might be right. But Wickman blames the Bangladeshis for this. Spice up the wicket (you're at home) and spunk up the dosh for UDRS. Then you might get a result. In the meantime you have to take the smooth with the smooth. Because there's no rough to bowl at...

Can Bangladesh Pull it Off?

Day three of the Dhaka test has proved as gruelling as any of the rearguard actions England perpetrated on South Africa and West Indies pulled on England last year. Trotty, Ian Bell and the unlikely Tim Bresnan have middled the hell out of a whole load of dot balls and picked off some poor bowling from Razzak to take this Test back to parity. A twenty run lead with 180 overs to go would suggest that this test is heading for a bore draw.

Bangladesh have looked competitive here for long stretches and they would argue that a bit of umpiring luck would have them batting again and England under pressure. However long periods of attrition by England bored them into incompetence and this correspondent would question some of the captaincy decisions from the Banglas.

With Treadwell in there and only Finn to come it looks unlikely that England will race to a big enough lead to get the Banglas into serious trouble. However the Deshis could turn England over if they give it a bit of humpty tomorrow. A Tamin ton in double quick time and a bit of long handle elsewhere and you can't imagine England trying to chase more than 275 with five batters and Prior. They have form in that area of declining anything much above three and a half an over in the fourth innings. And we've seen in South Africa that England are still prone to the odd collapse in the final 90 minutes.

So maybe this test isn't done. But Wickman doubts it and he thinks there's going to be a whole lot of whingeing to accompany it. Wickman thinks the Bangladeshi groundsman is probably the person that most supporters ought to be aiming their barbs at if it does turn into a draw. The skipper has criticised the Bangla Board for not paying for UDRS in favour of sprucing the place up for David Morgan's visit and the supporters are blaming the umpires again for racism (or at least minnowism). But this is an absolute road of a wicket. Only the fact that England played five bats and Colly got a good one have made this a contest.

Wickman thinks that these road wickets are being prepared because underdog sides (see England in England too) don't want to get bowled out twice on their own decks. This is fine of course unless and until the oppo gets 500. Someone has to take twenty wickets to win a game and it doesn't look like this track is going to deteriorate enough to make that a possibility.

Wick Man Reaches New Heights

The last time anyone mentioned Everest at the Wick it was someone trying to sell Keith double glazing. DBW said he'd knock some up and that was the last we heard of it. Now one intrepid Wick Man has worn the shirt (there's always been some pink in the badge) at Everest Base Camp.

Phil "Milkybar" Linter can be seen here at quite a few thousand feet. The renowned club day umpire and 3xi spearhead is on a round-the-worlder and recently uploaded this snap to update us all. Luckily its so cold he has had to keep his hands in his pockets - something which Wick batsmen will be delighted to see.

Everest, as keen geographers will know, is not so far from Bangladesh. If (see previous posts) Bangla fans are annoyed at some of the umpiring decisions of Tucker et al out there, we should ask Splints to drop by for the second test. A couple of sessions with him and they would truly know the pain of poor umpiring.

Jaapies. Get Over It

The Bangladesh ODI series has been a constant source of entertainment for Wickman. Not because he's been watching it. Oh no. He's been hard at work pumping out hot air. The few snatched minutes in the boozer he's managed while nursing a pint of Old Jockstrap have mostly centred on uninspiring passages of middle over nurdling or crops of wickets falling to lookalikey left arm round spinners.

What has been keeping Wickman glued to a screen is forums and microblogs. There have been two themes emerging from the rich world of content that is Cricinfo and Twitter. Firstly Bangladesh feel hard done by. Their supporters claim that there is a global conspiracy at ICC level to keep them downnnn in the basement of cricket. So the Rod Tucker failure to trigger Eion Morgan early on for two marginal LBs is represented as a national scandal. Tucker it is claimed is a poor umpire foisted on the Banglas because they are a bottom tier side.

Tucker they opine would not give out a world class bat but would have the trigger finger out quicker than the time it takes to build an Austrian cellar in which to imprison your children faced with a Bangla batter. In fact all umpires other than Dar and Taufel are not good enough to officiate but they are never booked becuase Bangladesh is a rubbish assignment and ICC won't book the best.

Which is probably true. NOT. Why appoint your best umpires to a two-bit series between two very average one day sides? Keep 'em fresh for something enormous like West Indies vs Zimbabwe where Taufel actually is. Really. There are some serious chips out there on those Bangla shoulders...

The second major theme that has emerged is whigeing and moaning about the make up of the England team. The percentage of South African born players coupled with the emergence of Eoin "that'sll be a pint of Guinness to be sure" Morgan at the same time has cricket fans the world over frothing away indignantly.

Now Wickman gets it of course. The underlying criticism is that our English and Welsh (and dammit) Scottish players just aren't getting enough of a look in. And if you live outside our fair shores you can use it taunt us. Wickman isn't going to debate the individual cases here but merely point you in a couple of directions. 1. Backwards. Robin Smith. Robin Jackman. Graham Hick. Allan Lamb. The Nawab of Pataudi. And countless others have all played for England down the years. Yes we have a few more fellows at the moment who have one English parent not two playing for us. But tough. Wickman loved watching Trotty kiss the badge in the Ashes. Deal with it.

2. Sideways. West Indies. Look it up on the map. Find The West Indies' parliament or legal structure. Check them out at the Olympics. Find them in The Hague. Doesn't exist. Not a place. Guyana is in South America. Etc etc. It's cricket. It works. The ECB spent most of the 1980s and 1990s touring South London trying to find some second generation West Indian Holdings and Garners to terrorize them back. We came up with Devon Malcolm and that drug smuggler. *sigh*

3. And here's a distraction technique. New Zealand rugby. It doesn't bother a Kiwi when he's watching the Haka and half the monsters on show are from Islands not currently sovereign territory. You only have to look at the limp wristed sides of the middle of the last century nancying about and patting their thighs like children playing pat-a-cake in the playground to realise why someone decided to pop out in a motor boat to look for some big lads to beef things up. It doesn't seem as though they've found any cricketers on their travels though...

So enough. These Jaapies are our Jaapies. Eoin is our Irishman. Our Queen is German. The PM is Scottish. The Duke of Edinburgh is Greek. Wickman could go on. But he was born in Chile.

England vs Bangladesh. Maturity needed

Yesterday Wickman watched the opening one dayer between us and Bangladesh. In HD. From somewhere called Mirpur. Anyone who thinks Sky should be rewarded for this sort of admittedly commercially driven behaviour by then being asked to hand over the Ashes to terrestrial TV needs to be put in a darkened room with a cold compress. But Wickman already digresses.

Not a student of Bangladeshi cricket (opens paper, sees they got beaten, wonders when Mohammed Ashrafal will stop being accused of wasting his talent), Wickman was pretty darned surprised to turn on to Tamin Iqbal in imperious form and Bangladesh at the halfway stage threatening a monster score on a pretty unlikely kind of wicket.

A cursory inspection of the cards showed once again the entire weight of our bowling effort was being shouldered by the inestimable Swanny, Frontbottom was mistakenly playing instead of Treadwell and a quick look at the demeanour of the new England captain suggested he was wondering which of his highly paid stars would bail him out of what was looking like a pretty leaky ship.

Help arrived with a middle order collapse courtesy of some crummy running by the Banglas and some un-Pietersenesque fielding by Kevin Pietersen. And after a good fightback between Tamin and Naeem for the seventh wicket Bangladesh subsided to the sort of total that England have been managing to chase recently.

And then the wailing and gnashing of teeth started in the commentary box and the comment sections of cricinfo. Apparently (Wickman told you he was no expert) the story of Bangladeshi cricket is one long missed opportunity caused by naivety of young players. This is a cricketing nation on the edge of greatness held back only by a collective ability to screw things up due to not having enough experience. Andrew Miller on cricinfo contrasted Bangladesh with the boring, shovelling through midwicket maturity of Collingwood and pointed the finger. The Sky commentators - especially the home team - were quick to abandon all hope.

Which is a bit odd really. Collingwood apart with his 174 appearances, man for man England have played fewer of these things than their counterparts. That said they probably have played more First Class cricket, but in pure international terms England are a younger set up. Which of course causes huge problems. The line that in a couple of years Bangladesh will be world beaters once they can find some experience doesn't really hold true does it?

But the biggest issue of immaturity occurred not on the field but in the commentary box. In a moment where time stood still Wickman thought perhaps that there was not enough oxygen in his living room, a (can't find the name) Bangladesh commentator said, on live television in front of an audience of perhaps millions, that Alistair Cook was batting like Brian Lara.

Dear God. Many commentators are fond of hyperbole readers and some sub-continental commentators are fonder than others, but this was stretching a point. Cooky was slog sweeping like a goodun and his back foot forces through point were efficient there's no doubt. Perhaps we are seeing the emergence of a left-handed Graham Gooch. But an English Lara?

Wickman paused and hoped for some sign that this was a sly dig, a masterful piece of sarcasm. But there was nothing. The English commentator was momentarily quiet. Almost rueful. Nothing was said. It became a longeur... the tension was palatable. Potable even. But then the new Lara eased a single to get off strike and the howler was allowed to drift back into time.

Forget the players. Until the commentators can avoid this kind of terrible naivety Bangladesh cricket has got some way to go.