England won the match by 8 wickets against Bangladesh which was played at Abu Dhabi on 27th October. England chased down the target of 125 runs with 5.5 overs remaining. England now have a whopping NRR (Net Run Rate) of +3.61 which now has kept them in a good stead as things can get ugly at the later stages of the tournament.
Bangladesh had won the toss & elected to bat first & while doing so they stumbled & scored 124 runs for the loss of 9 wickets. England’s openers Jason Roy & Jos Buttler came out all guns blazing as England scored 50 runs in the power-play overs for the loss of 1 wicket which was of Jos Buttler. It was expected that Bangladesh’s spinners would thrive on spinning tracks especially considering the weakness of England; but it turned out to be different as Roy was toying with every bowler even with the likes of ‘Fizz’ Mustafizur Rahman & Shakib Al Hasan.
Roy scored a splendid knock of 61 runs in 38 balls in which he hit 5 fours & 3 sixes. The peculiarity of Roy’s knock was that he didn’t feared to go down the track & assert his authority & dominance. Roy was accompanied by England’s umbrella man Dawid Malan who played a second fiddle as he scored 28 runs in 25 balls.
Batting first Bangladesh was in tatters as they lost 3 wickets in the power-play overs for a mere 27 runs. Bangladesh’s innings never got off to a start as none of their batters scored 30 runs. Mushfiqur Rahim tried to put the innings on track but he got out on 29 runs leaving an improbable task on the next players. Eoin Morgan used all his resources next to perfection as he gave the ball to the part-time spinner Liam Livingstone who bagged the wicket of Rahim & Mahmudullah.
The pick of the bowlers was Tymal Mills who was dexterous as his wicked variations proved to be nightmare as he finished with the figures of 3 wickets for 27 runs. Tyamal Mills would be grateful to the fact that ECB (England Cricket Board) entrusted him as he wasn’t a part of national team setup since last 3 years. Chris Woakes proved his credentials as he gave away only 12 runs in his 4 over spell & took 1 wicket of the big fish ‘Shakib’.
Bangladesh need to go back to the drawing board as now they have lost 2 matches out of 2 & their qualification hopes look bleak as they need to win all the next 3 matches. The senior batters Shakib, Rahim & Mahmudullah need to decide their role as one of them has to be present at the end of the innings irrespective of the circumstances as the other batters are naive.
Bangladesh’s next match is against West Indies on 29th October at Sharjah. Bangladesh vs West Indies clash would be an eliminator especially for West Indies as they are the defending champions whereas Bangladesh would look to spoil the party; the same way which they had done in the inaugural T20 World Cup 2007.
England so far are proving to be a major threat as their weakness is not exploited. Their next match is scheduled against their arch-rivals Australia on the 30th October at Dubai. If England can overcome Australia hurdle then they would be serious contenders to lift the trophy irrespective of Australia’s lack of camaraderie in T20I as Australia is known for denting opponent team’s confidence.
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