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Bangladesh v England 3rd ODI

Thursday, November 13 2003

Bangladesh vs England
3rd ODI – 12th November 2003

Bangladesh 182 all out England 185 for 3


Another day, another 7 wicket win for England over Bangladesh. And yet another Man Of The Match Award for Andew Flintoff, who was, unsurprisingly, given the Man Of The Series Award as well. If this sounds like a re-run of the first two games, that is because it was. Except that it was not quite as interesting as its predecessors.


Once again, Bangladesh won the toss and, once again, they chose to bat first. There were two possible outcomes that would have livened up proceedings. Option 1 was that Bangladesh would score enough runs to make England sweat under the lights. Option 2 was that they would fold even more comprehensively than they had done on Monday and England would make history by chasing the lowest ODI score ever. Unfortunately, neither of these happened.


They did make a poor start, losing Moniruzzaman with only 6 runs on the board. Attempting an ill-judged hook off Anderson, he only managed to sky the ball and the bowler took a fine return catch. At this point, remembering how their top order folded on their last outing, the English bowlers probably expected easy pickings. To be fair, Bangladesh did show more resolve this time and sometimes even looked like they might post a respectable score. That they did not do owed as much to soft dismissals as to great English bowling. Several promising partnerships were ended by needless runouts or daft shots. Eight batsman made double figures, but the highest score was 36 from Mushfiqur Rahman. The failure of any of these to go on and make a major score will frustrate them hugely. Kirtley, Clarke and Flintoff all helped themselves to a couple of wickets, with Batty and Anderson taking one apiece.


At the start of this innings, only four of the English batsman had an average in this series. Bangladesh must have hoped that they would see rather more of them today, and they were encouraged when Sloanki once again went cheaply, this time giving the keeper Khaled Mashud catching practice with a wild slash at Mushfiqur Rahman. But there were to be no more breakthroughs with the new ball. Instead, Trescothick and Vaughan batted serenely, and were rarely troubled. Eventually, they decided to make things more interesting by playing across perfectly straight deliveries. Vaughan was LBW to Rahman for 29 and Trescothick was clean bowled by Khaled Mahmud for a round 50. At this point, with 81 still needed, another quick wicket would have put some welcome pressure on the visitors, but it wasn’t to be. Collingwood batted sensibly if unspectacularly and finished with 46. He was lucky to be dropped on 35, but he will be pleased with his contribution today. Flintoff had clearly given some serious thought to batting steadily as he took a couple of balls to get his eye in. However, he then proceeded to smash a typically entertaining 52 from 39 balls, which included another four towering sixes. England won with over 10 overs to spare.


David Lewis



Posted by David