England Cricket Betting: A journey into the unknown?

Bat and ball / Andrew Hughes / 27 January 2010 / Leave a Comment

Can Alastair Cook maintain England's perfect record in Bangladesh?

"Nothing less than an English whitewash in both formats will be considered good enough."

England's forthcoming tour of Bangladesh is an ideal opportunity for some of their underperforming players to hit a bit of form. But few members of the squad have played in that part of the world before. Andrew Hughes gives us the lowdown on what Alistair Cook and co can expect when they take on the lowest-ranked Test playing nation.

The last time England ventured to Bangladesh was in the autumn of 2003/04. At that time, they had a newish captain in Michael Vaughan and were about to embark on a run of success that would carry them to their Ashes triumph of 2005. The tour was used as an opportunity for the team to bond and to improve their fitness levels. This time round, the situation is a little different. A stand-in captain leads a squad of whom many have something to prove, particularly the batsmen.

The first thing to say is that England are expected to win pretty much every game they play in this part of the world. Bangladesh remain the poorest of the Test playing nations, their only win at the level coming against the West Indies 'B' team last year. They will be long odds to break their duck on this tour and if you wanted to back the home side for a series win, you will probably be able to get odds of [13.0] or higher, England are likely to be as short as [1.3].

If the home team are to spring a shock, it will be in the shorter format. The three one-day internationals come before the Test series, so that may be their best chance of catching the tourists cold. Though they haven't won a one day series against a full member of the ICC (excluding their devalued victory in the Caribbean last year), they have won games at home against Sri Lanka, New Zealand and India. The one-day series winners market is not yet mature, but you should be able to back the home side at [4.5] or better.

One of the challenges of playing cricket in that part of the world is coming to terms with the conditions. Few of the current England team will have played in Bangladesh before and may take a while to adjust. Fortunately for the tourists, this tour is taking place in late winter, so the extremes of heat and humidity sometimes experienced there should not occur. Smog is a different problem. Dhaka in particular suffers from some of the worst air pollution in the world, thanks to a combination of old cars, brick kilns, dust and factory pollution. Practice facilities are also likely to be more spartan than the pampered tourists are used to.

The pitches will be typical Asian surfaces, not particularly quick or bouncy and helpful to spin bowlers on days four and five. The curators can sometimes leave grass on the surface, but it is likely to be dry grass and of little assistance to the seamers. You would expect spinners to do most of the work but curiously, on their last tour, it was Matthew Hoggard, Steve Harmison and Richard Johnson who did the damage. That the quicker bowlers have had success in Bangladesh is undoubtedly due to the weakness of the home side against pace bowling. So although England are taking two spinners, it should not be assumed that both will play every game.

As for the players England are likely to come up against, there is no lack of natural talent amongst the Bangladeshis. Where they struggle is in application and in staying calm under pressure. Their classiest batsman is Mohammed Ashraful, but he is on a long run of poor form. Tamim Iqbal, Mahmadullah and chirpy wicket keeper Mushfiqur Rahim all scored runs against India and got them quickly. But over-ambition too often proved their downfall and they struggled to cope with the seam bowling of Ishant Sharma and Zaheer Khan.

There were signs of improvement amongst the bowlers against India. Captain Shakib Al Hassan is a canny and economical spin bowler who will at the very least keep one end up. More encouragingly for the home side, Shahadat Hossain and Rubel Hussain targeted the Indian batsmen with some aggressive short pitched bowling, Shahadat even felled Rahul Dravid with a bouncer. That said, such tactics should not prove to be a problem for England's batsmen. Nothing less than an English whitewash in both formats will be considered good enough.