Bangladesh's win was set-up by http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mashrafe-Mortaza-c1917
For the first time ever, Bangladesh beat England in an international, and this was after playing them for ten years. In the second ODI at Bristol in Gloucester, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Bangladesh-c747 clinched a narrow win over England to level the series at 1-1.
So, what went wrong for England against a side to whom they had never lost a game earlier?
Change in captaincy?:
Now, it is too early to comment on this, but the fact is that in all the games that the Bangladeshis played this year before this series, Shakib al http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Hasan-c61990 was the skipper of the side. And Bangladesh lost all their games. As compared to that, a change in the guard saw Mashrafe Mortaza regain the captaincy that he had lost to Shakib thanks to his injury last July.
Immediately upon taking over the captaincy, Bangladesh managed to win their first game and this could have something to do with Mortaza. There was enough evidence of positive and aggressive captaincy by the incumbent, none more evident than by the dismissal of Luke Wright. Wright is one of the more aggressive batsmen in the English set-up and in the company of Jonathon Trott, it looked like he could have taken the English side to safety.
Instead, he was caught in the slips thanks to the astute captaincy of Mortaza, who brought in a slip at such a late stage in the English innings.
Imrul Kayes’ batting:
For too many games now, Imrul Kayes has been called http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Gautam-Gambhir-c58623 as well.
However, in this game, it was Kayes’ extremely well played innings of 76 that set up Bangladesh’s score of 236 after Iqbal had been dismissed early for 18. The innings was a matured one, and came off 111 balls but it was worth its weight in gold and went a long way in winning the side the game.
Mortaza, the all-rounder:
So far, we have spoken about Mortaza captained the side in a manner that one hadn’t seen from Bangladesh in a long time. However, he led by example as well. First, while batting in the first innings, Mortaza smacked a 25-ball 22 to ensure that the team went on to get 236 in the first place. Then, with the ball in his hand, he bowled his ten overs for a mere 42 runs and went on to scalp a couple of important wickets Stuart Broad and James Anderson – both at the f*g end of the innings when the English side could have got away from Bangladesh.
Strange English tactics:
The English side went into the game with an extra batsman, as they got in Jonathon Trott in place of off-spinner James Tredwell. This was a surprising move considering that Tredwell had played only one game before this in the series and not done too badly.
Then again, the batting order was all over the place. One would have expected Luke Wright to bat at the number six position after Ian Bell’s injury, but for some strange reason it was Michael Yardy who was sent ahead of him. Wright could have made some difference had he had the chance to settle down, and by the time he came to bat, the asking rate had climbed up drastically.
The Ian Bell injury:
It was an unfortunate one, but Bell’s absence from the middle order meant that the previous game’s top-scorer was out of action and the English side fell a batsman http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Short-c90107.
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