Pre-match Summary
About Enam's Injury:
Yes it is unfortunate about Enam?s injury but that is sport and he will recover and go on to play plenty of cricket. He has a complete rupture of his PCL and will be out for between 8 and 10 weeks at this stage. He is not in any pain and there is very little swelling so the forecast is good for him. He will see a specialist here in the UK prior to heading home in late August.
About Nazmul and Talha:
Nazmul Hossain is also returning home this week to see his family and freshen up before the champion?s trophy commences. We had to send one player home in order to Talha to come over and I offered Nazmul the opportunity given the length of this tour and the additional 4 weeks he will now be staying. It leaves us a little short for the 3rd test and the ODI?s but provides him with the best opportunity to perform in the Champion?s trophy.
Team for the 3rd test is as follows:
Nafees Ahmed (captain)
Aftab Ahmed (vice capt)
Dhiman Ghosh (vice capt)
Mushfiqur Rahim (wk)
Nafees Iqbal
Shamsu Rahman
Nazim Uddin
Nadif Chowdhury
Rubaiyat Huq
Ashim Chowdhury
Kasi Shahadat Hossain
Israq Sonnet
Not Playing: Enamul Haque Jnr & Nazmul Hossain
Hope this brings everyone up to date.
Post-match Summary
The 3rd test finished in a draw as was destined to be the case after losing more than two full days to rain. There was the possibility of trying to set up a match today but the additional value of some confidence building time in the middle for our middle order prior to the one day series was more important to us given that we had already lost the test series.
We set our selves a target once the rain had intervened not to lose a single hour of play. By this I mean we break each day down in to 6 by 1 hour blocks and we aim to win each hour. For example if you are 2 for 100 at lunch that would be considered a shared or equal session, if we were 100 for 1 that would be a win to us if batting, if we were 100 for 3 that would be a loss.
Credit to the players during this match, where rain ruined our chances of a win, but we maintained our effort to not lose a single hour of play, we equalled two, and won the rest. This is an important learning process for the players to ensure they are able to play the last ball of the day with the same intensity as the first ball.
We finished up being bowled out for 346 today with Nafees Iqbal 56, Shamsu Rahman 34, Nazim Uddin 65, Nadif 37, Dhiman 48 and Mushfiqur Rahim remaining 36 not out. Credit again to Ashim Chowdhury who batted for nearly an hour for his 10 runs, but created a partnership of 40 with Mushfiqur.
England then batted a second time and were 35 for 1 at stumps with Rubaiyat Huq picking up Joe Denly for 7. Denly was struck on the forearm by a Rajib bouncer in the first over of the innings.
I have attached some interesting statistics from the test series indicating the runs scored by the top 7 batsmen from each team across the series. I, along with others have been critical of our batsmen at times, but when compared to the England top order, James Hildreth?s double hundred excluded, the Bangladesh team equalled or out performed their counterparts.
Outstanding contributions were provided by Shamsu Rahman, Aftab Ahmed and Mushfiqur Rahim. Nazim Uddin is finally starting to show some form and batted very well today. Hopefully he can take this form in to the one day games. A disappointing aspect is the openers who despite strong lead up form in practice matches, failed to really achieve in the Test matches when it counted.
This statistics indicate that batting may not have been as easy as we think it should be. Although the English lads played some equally foolish shots to through their wickets away. So we are not the only country who do that, maybe the English players learn quicker as they get older though.
We have our first practice one day match on Sunday the 22 against Hampshire 2nd XI and then the first ODI at Arundle Castle on Tuesday followed by back to back matches at Hove on 26th and 27th.
Scorecard: Test Three
Complete Scorecard: Test Two
Complete Scorecard: Test One