This was first T20 series victory for Bangladesh over world champions, they produced match defining performances while for England, things always looked in trouble. In the second T20i, Bangladesh defeated England by 4 wickets, chasing only 117 posted by English batters.
For England, it is hard pill to swallow, things haven’t been as good as they would have expected since the culmination of World Cup. This comes as back to back losses in T20s against Bangladesh which never happened before.
Ex English cricketer and well known pundit Nasser Hussain said that England were a batter short on a tough pitch to bat on. Actually, they were not before the series as Will Jacks was forced to pull out of the series due to injury.
“The selectors have a difficult juggling act. They’ve got one of the great series coming up in the Ashes. So, they are trying to rest their Test match players.
“They’ve got white-ball players playing Test match cricket. They’ve got lads that are injured. They’ve got the county season starting soon.
Nasser Hussain was clearly not impressed with the decision of selectors to drop a batter and go with three all rounders instead. But Jos Buttler had no regrets about his team selection, he wanted go with a team like that.
“We’ve got 18 counties, if we can’t put an extra batter or two on the ground in Bangladesh, if it means flying (Ollie) Pope or (Zak) Crawley, who I think will be a good white-ball cricketer, I don’t think it’s good enough to say we are one batter short.”
“We are the England cricket team, it’s an important tour. We saw what it meant to Bangladesh, and we have to treat it with the same respect. They didn’t have the right balance of squad,”
There were plenty of players available who would have been good fit in the team, but selectors went for previous odi team because of obvious experience playing in those conditions. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out and the series is lost by England.
“I can guess there are a few England cricketers who play for counties that would like to be playing out there. The players that will be there for the next World Cup get the extra responsibility, so I get a little bit of the thinking.”
“Curran, Woakes, Jordan, Ahmed got a bat on difficult conditions on a difficult pitch.”