England v Bangladesh
Wednesday, 11:00 BST
Live on Sky Sports Cricket
England’s perfect start
What can you say about England’s win over the West Indies, the defending champions? Plenty, really.
You can say that they were near-perfect with the ball. Five bowlers bowled, all five took wickets. The worst economy rate for anyone was the six an over by Chris Woakes, who went for 12 off two.
Moeen Ali walked away with the man of the match award after taking 2-18 off four, the key to that decision presumably being that he bowled in the Powerplay and dismissed opener Lendl Simmons and number four Shimron Hetmyer.
Adil Rashid can feel a bit hard-done-by after taking 4-2 but, then again, he dismissed the lower middle-order and tail after all the hard work had been done.
The truth is that as well as England bowled, the Windies were awful with the bat.
It was also somewhat odd that England lost four wickets in chasing just 56. Fine, they wanted to get on with it and wrap up the game as quickly as possible with net run rates already in mind. But still.
England’s love-hate relationship with Dawid Malan continued. Chalked in to come in at three, four other batsmen were promoted ahead of him before the job was done. Also pretty odd.
But England certainly won’t think about changing the side after what happened on Saturday.
Likely XI: Roy, Buttler, Malan, Bairstow, Livingstone, Morgan, Ali, Woakes, Jordan, Rashid, Mills.
Bangladesh licking their wounds
That Sri Lanka reached odds of 10.09/1 in-play on the Exchange in that chase against them on Sunday tells its own story.
The Tigers will be very disappointed because they did most of the hard work. Set a good target, check. Dismiss dangerman Kusal Perera early, check. Have their opponents behind the run rate after losing three wickets, check.
But to be fair to Sri Lanka, they showed plenty of bottle in going for their shots when they needed to and accelerated well, knowing which bowlers to target.
It was probably Bangladesh’s fielding that cost them the match. Some sloppy ground fielding and a couple of dropped catches came back to haunt them.
Earlier, Mohammad Naim hit a good 62 off 52 and Mushfiqur Rahim an even better 57 off 37.
As ever, Shakib Al-Hasan will be their main man.
Likely XI: Naim, Das, Shakib, Rahim, Hossain, Mahmudullah, Nurul Hasan, Mahedi Hasan, Saifuddin, Ahmed, Rahman.
What’s a good score at Abu Dhabi?
South Africa managed just 118 in defeat here in Abu Dhabi on Saturday against Australia and, on another day, could have won the game.
Incredibly tricky wicket? Tricky yes but the first innings score and subsequent chase were probably more a reflection of the fact there were two excellent bowling units out there and two pretty poor batting ones.
In the qualifying round, the Netherlands managed 164 against Namibia and Sri Lanka posted 171 against Ireland, perhaps a better reflection of what a par score might be. Both were chased.
It’s not an evening game so dew is not likely to be a factor. But both sides would probably rather chase anyway.
Match winner market best left alone
England are 1.330/100, Bangladesh 4.216/5. No surprise.
If there was a toss bias whereby Bangladesh could look to chase about 160-170 with dew coming into play, a trade could be on.
But there isn’t a real toss bias, there isn’t going to be any dew and England would be likely to score more than that anyway.
If there isn’t an angle on the match winner market (and we’re not going to be backing England at 1.330/100) then we can’t pretend there is.
Be woke to Woakes
When South Africa played Australia here on Saturday the two stand-out bowlers were Anrich Nortje and Josh Hazlewood. Two tall, accurate bowlers who aren’t rapid but are quick enough. It was a similar story when the Netherlands played Namibia.
The England man with a similar profile is Woakes. With the Windies all out before the 15th over, he only bowled two overs, claiming the vital wicket of Evin Lewis. But they were two very good overs.
Bangladesh are generally good against spin so may deal petty well with Adil Rashid (3/1) and Moeen Ali (4/1).
Tymal Mills’ (3/1) pace may cause them problems and Chris Jordan (7/2) could be a good inclusion for England at this tournament.
I’ll go with the old-school nagging line and length of Woakes to do the most damage at 7/2.
Buttler can do it in MOM market
It’s not much fun going with favourites. But there are favourites and then there are favourites. At 15/2, Jos Buttler could be a lot of fun as favourite for man-of-the match.
If England bat first, he could well get to 70 or 80 if he’s there by the 15th or 16th over. If they chase, he could well go a long way to getting England over the line by himself.
You never know with Jason Roy (9/1), while anyone batting at four or lower may not get much of a go if the openers hang around for nine or 10 overs.
Buttler looked in decent touch on Saturday, without there being too many fireworks, and he should give us a decent run or our money.
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