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England fall short

Wednesday, October 15 2003

After the loss of more than 2 sessions of the first day of 3, England were put in by the Bangladesh Cricket Board President's XI (a bit of a bizarre name considering it was a 12-a-side game!) and the top 3 were all in the runs, a fine 90 from Marcus Trescothick being the highlight.

When he departed on the second day, the score became 181-3, and amazingly the innings collapsed with a further 3 wickets falling without additional score, including ducks for the Surrey pairing of Graeme Thorpe and Rikki Clarke.

A battling 43 from Chris Read, who would've wanted some runs to make sure he had the keeper's spot ahead of Geraint Jones enabled the Tourists to grind their way to 253 all out, below what they would've wanted after a good start.

In the 24 overs possible on the second evening, England's attack destroyed the top order, reducing the side to 46-6 by the close. Matthew Hoggard was the pick of the bowlers, and he carried that on on the final morning as he finished with figures of 6-13 from 9 and a half overs. The innings closed at a mere 57, but rather than enforce the follow-on, England sent out Clarke and Thorpe to try and atone for their first innings failures.

They batted for just over an hour in adding 69 before Clarke fell for 19, an innings that actually took 3 more balls than Thorpe's unbeaten 47 from 42 balls, and the declaration was immediate, setting a victory target of 266.

The target was never likely ot be threatened, but did the bowlers have enough ability to skittle them a second time? An early wicket for Martin Saggers raised hopes, but Captain Hannan Sarkar dug in for 104 balls for just 16 runs, whilst Aftab Ahmed hit 45 at the other end.

Wickets started to tumble when this pair were separated, and they fell from 87-1 to 123-8 as the spin of Ashley Giles (3-47) and Gareth Batty (3-22) took control.

With just 2 wickets to fall came resistance from number 10 Gazi Alamgir, who batted for half an hour without scoring, and although Steve Harmison ripped out Nadif Chowdhury with a quick ball, there were only 2 balls to go, and he couldn't repeat the trick!

ENGLAND 253 (Trescothick 90, Read 43, Vaughan 36, Enamul Haque jnr 4-59, Anwar Hossain Monir 3-58, Gazi Alamgir 2-37)
BCB PRESIDENT'S XI 57 (Hoggard 6-13, Saggers 2-6, Harmison 2-21)
ENGLAND 69-1dec (Thorpe 47*)
BCB PRESIDENT'S XI 143-9 (Aftab Ahmed 45, Batty 3-22, Giles 3-47)

Cricketweb Man of the Match - Trescothick.

Posted by Marc