A lopsided, unbalanced England team, chosen for the experience they might gain as much as the success they might bring, was toppled by Bangladesh for the second time in four days, a home side revelling in familiar conditions and winning the second Twenty20 by four wickets, and with it the series with a game to spare.
With Rehan Ahmed making another debut – and taking a wicket with his second delivery – England produced glimpses of the spirit and quality that carried them to the T20 World Cup only months ago. There was a particularly uplifting bowling performance from Jofra Archer, and Afif Hossain’s bail was to be particularly uplifted after Archer bowled him so emphatically that it flew, flashing red in the dark-night sky, nearly to the boundary. That was a very literal highlight of an evening that, from an England perspective, had few.
But even during a spirited performance in the field, which kept England in with a chance of defending a bantamweight score of 117 until the 19th over, there were signs of the same issues that undermined their display with the bat. Although two batters have been forced from the squad through injury neither was replaced, leaving it and the team wildly bowler-heavy. As a result there were so many bowling options on the field that Chris Woakes and Chris Jordan got only one over each, with the latter coming in cold to bowl at the death and duly leaking boundaries as Bangladesh wrapped it up with seven balls to spare.
Jos Buttler insisted he had no regrets about the failure to add a batter to the group. “It’s a different balance and a different feel to the team,” said the captain. “It felt like a great chance to expose the all-rounders’ batting, maybe one spot higher than in our normal team. There’s a few players who’ve opted not to be here anyway for various reasons so it felt like instead of calling someone else up, [we should] try to use the guys who would be exposed to these conditions in the 50-over World Cup.”
Career-best bowling figures for Mehidy Hasan Miraz and another excellent innings from Najmul Hossain Shanto, who added an unbeaten 46 to the three half-centuries he has scored in five games against England over the last fortnight, powered Bangladesh to victory.
Despite losing the toss again, bringing to 10 the number of games played by England’s men in all formats this calendar year without a single successful coin-flip, England’s day had started promisingly enough. Buttler relegated himself to No4 in the cause of further experimentation – “I’m very comfortable batting anywhere in the order, I just felt like it would be an opportunity to try something different,” he explained – starting with Phil Salt and Dawid Malan and sending in Moeen Ali when the latter, a fellow left-hander, fell in the third over. But Salt and Moeen settled well and at the end of the powerplay England were 50-1, the innings ripe with promise.
It was not to last and, by the time they had doubled that score, 11 more overs had gone, as well as six more batters. Only Salt, who reached 25 off 19 before backing away to give himself room to slap a Shakib Al Hasan delivery straight back to the bowler at an undroppable height, and Ben Duckett, with 28 off 28, scored more than 15 runs, and only the latter faced more than 20 deliveries. Buttler’s dismissal for just six, courtesy of Hasan Mahmud’s superb yorker, felt decisive and was celebrated as such.
But Bangladesh’s reply was anything but a carefree victory dash. Litton Das and Rony Talukdar fell early and for a while the hosts scored worryingly slowly. But unlike England they had one top-order batter who took control of the innings. In the end the match probably turned in the 14th over when an lbw review against Mehidy failed by the narrowest of margins and then Rashid deceived Shanto beautifully but somehow cleared the bails, so surprising Buttler that he missed it too and the ball trundled away for four byes.
after newsletter promotion
Mehidy celebrated his let-off by smashing Moeen for a six and a four off successive deliveries in the following over, and the die was cast.
“We are really happy and really proud,” Mehidy said. “We have a good side, we have lots of good players in our team. We’re just looking forward, being positive, and thinking about how to get better in the next match.”
