For nearly seven years Bangladesh had not lost a home series in a format they appeared, albeit in very specific and familiar conditions, close to mastering. It has taken only two games for England to end that run, with the Tigers’ chances of chasing a target of 327 – Jason Roy this time the tourists’ key figure with the bat – effectively destroyed when Sam Curran ripped through their top order with three wickets in his first seven balls, and they eventually fell short by 132 runs – precisely Roy’s personal contribution.
Adil Rashid ripped through the middle order before, having started their innings by losing two wickets in as many balls of a Curran over, Bangladesh ended it the same way – albeit the first was a run-out, Moeen Ali’s 20-yard direct hit from mid-off doing for Taskin Ahmed.
Bangladesh had built their formidable record by producing surfaces – and bowling attacks – capable of restricting totals to manageable levels. Here England ripped up the script: theirs was the 10th highest total ever scored in Bangladesh – level with the host country’s effort against Pakistan on the same ground in 2014 (when they lost). The Tigers had only once scored as many runs in the second innings of an ODI (when they lost), while their best score on this ground was 295 (when they also lost). The historical equation was clear: the more runs in a match, the lower their chances of winning it.
After their dismal start Tamim Iqbal and Shakib Al Hasan brought some stability to the home side’s innings, but no fireworks. England’s bowling might have looked less formidable with Chris Woakes and Jofra Archer replaced by Curran and Saqib Mahmood – making his first international appearance in 12 injury-affected months – but still Bangladesh had no answers. The support from a near sell-out crowd in Mirpur was relentless – at least until, defeat inevitable, the stands emptied towards the end – but their team anything but.
Shakib went on to complete a 60th ODI half-century but the scoring was never rapid enough to threaten a successful chase. Halfway through their innings they were on 109-4 and the situation was stark: Bangladesh had scored more than eight runs off only one previous over, and needed to average more than eight runs from the remaining 25. They managed it only three times, and Monday’s final ODI in Chittagong is now simply a mission to avoid a series whitewash.
Roy alone scored as many boundaries as Bangladesh. When out of sorts he can be a depressing sight, and after being dismissed cheaply in Wednesday’s first game he started awkwardly here – notably two of his first four boundaries came from edges. But he grew in authority with every run to threaten a genuine rampage: there were 12 fours in the 104 balls it took to reach his hundred and six more in the next 18, culminating in Taskin Ahmed being dismantled in a 35th over that featured three boundaries. But just as he reached peak Roy, a bull demolishing so much cheap crockery, he was trapped lbw by Shakib Al Hasan.
He had done enough to prove that he cannot yet be written off as an international force. Indeed over 16 ODI innings across the worst 12 months of his career Roy averages 39.6 – compared with an overall average of 40.11 – at a strike rate of 98.3. Of the 51 batters to have played at least 15 innings in that time he ranks 11th on batting average and fourth on strike rate. It is not exactly a catastrophe.
Phil Salt, Dawid Malan and James Vince – who posted a second single-digit score in a row, and can only dream of the kind of achievements that for Roy has constituted a crisis – fell cheaply, and it took the arrival of Jos Buttler for England to start powering towards a match-winning total. He scored 76 off 64 before, immediately after hitting Mehidy Hasan Miraz for successive sixes, being trapped lbw. Moeen Ali and Curran provided useful late-innings impetus but the latter’s most significant impact was still to come.
