BanglaCricket Article

Bangladesh has now played against all test playing nations in One Day Internationals. Until last July, Bangladesh did not play any test match against Australia and England. Now within a month's time, Bangladesh will be playing England in test matches. Before this tour, Bangladesh had played against England in only one ODI - ICC KnockOut tournament 2000.

But Bangladesh's match was drawn against England by a mere chance, rather than by choice. Bangladesh's form as a team was really good at that time. Now, Bangladesh team is also in good form under coach Dave Whatmore.

It was Al Shahriar's first match in One Day Internationals as an opener, and he also struggled against the new pace bowling attack of Caddick and Gough. On the other end, Javed Omar Belim also got a few blows which had prompted him to go retired hurt in the middle of his innings. He had shown enough courage to come back and eventually remained unbeaten on 63 - the highest individual score by a Bangladeshi against England in One Day Internationals.

It was also a good match for the former skipper Naimur Rahman. He scored 46 off 60 balls with the help of four fours and a couple of sixes, and fell only 1 run short of his highest score of 47 against Sri Lanka.

The lower order batsman of Bangladesh also clicked for Bangladesh in that match, helping Bangladesh to post a target of 232 for the loss of 8 wickets in 50 overs for England.

Surprisingly, Mushfiqur Rahman - the player who have done so well in the One Day series against Pakistan earlier, was also involved in Bangladesh's maiden One Day International match against England. Hasibul Hussain, now a veteran in Bangladesh's pace attack, was the main new ball bowler for Bangladesh.

One important point to note is that our main two spinners over the last decade - Enamul Haque and Mohammad Rafique had both played against England. And their bowling performance was better than any other bowlers, with an economy rate of just around 4.50.

Bangladesh was beaten comprehensively in that match, proving how good the wicket was for batting.

In the current Bangladesh squad, Javed Omar, Habibul Bashar, Khaled Mashud, Mohammad Rafique, Hasibul Hussain and Mushfiqur Rahman have experience of playing in that match. But the rest of the players have no experience of playing even against the England 'A' team.

Whatever is Bangladesh team's performance this time, it is certain that all the players will get some very good exposure - of playing against International team with some quality, as well as some exposure to media as the British media gives the players of the opposition a lot of exposure. This was evident in Bangladesh's practice match against England in the ICC Champion's Trophy in the year 2002 held in Sri Lanka.