England lost their first T20 international by six wickets since winning the T20 World Cup last year. Bangladesh easily beat England’s score of 157 to win the first match of the series in Chattogram.
The tourists put out seven of the same players that participated in the final against Pakistan at the MCG in November. However, despite Jos Buttler’s brilliant 67 from 42 balls, their weak batting unit let them down, and they only scored 156-6 when they batted first.
Bangladesh’s run chase started when Najmul Hossain Shanto hit a brilliant 51 from 30 balls, including four fours off the first four balls of a Mark Wood over. Shakib Al Hasan hit an unbeaten 34 from 24 balls to get the Tigers to the finish line with two overs across spare.
Buttler is great, but England’s late collapse hurts.
Shakib, the captain of Bangladesh, won the toss and put Buttler in to bat. He and Phil Salt, who could have been better, batted together for 80 runs. (38 from 35 balls).
Salt, who was on 20, and then Buttler, who was on 19, were both dropped in the last over of the powerplay. The drop of Salt by Bangladesh skipper Shakib, who missed a simple catch at mid-on, was incredibly frustrating.
Bangladesh’s spinners made it hard for Salt to use his let-off because they slowed him down. He smashed Nasum Ahmed (1-31) for six, but the left-arm spinner got his revenge when Salt nicked off at the end of the 10th over, using up a review because he didn’t see his toe-ended edge through to the keeper.
Dawid Malan (4) came and went quickly. Still, Ben Duckett (20 off 13) was effective with his wristy sweeps against the spinners and ramps to the quicks to be a capable foil for Buttler, who brought up a 32-ball fifty and England’s 100 with a flat-batted six off Hasan Mahmud before making it back-to-back maximums off the paceman.
The two of them put together 47 runs, but when they were both out in a row near the end of the 16th over, it messed up England’s innings. The visitors added only 30 runs and lost four wickets in the last five overs.
Duckett’s off-stump was broken by a wicked delivery from Mustafizur Rahman (1-34) that swung back into the left-hander and stayed low. Buttler’s crucial wicket was subsequently taken by Hasan Mahmud (2-26) when he toe-ended a ball to wide long-on while trying to clear the rope for the fifth time.
Mustafizur and Hasan kept working effectively together, taking the speed off the ball to frustrate Moeen Ali (8) and Sam Curran (6), who caught in the deep in the 19th over.
Chris Jordan hit a four off Taskin Ahmed’s penultimate ball to get England over 150. Moeen was stopped from hitting a six off the last ball by some excellent defending on the deep midwicket boundary, but Rony Talukdar took the quickly relayed catch.
Shanto and Shakib lead the pursuit of Bangladesh.
Talukdar made up for it by helping Bangladesh rocket out of the blocks in the run chase. Buttler sent the ball to Adil Rashid (1-25), whose beautifully-flighted googly removed the opener.
Shanto changed the lbw call against him because technology showed he had caught the leg-spinner when he tried to reverse sweep it.
He then took advantage of this by hitting Wood for four fours in a row, using the England quick’s speed against him. This made it six fours in a run after Chris Woakes had given T20I rookie Towhid Hridoy (24 from 17) two fours in the over before.
Towhid hit Rashid for six, but then he hit Moeen (1-27) to a fielder in the deep, and Wood (1-24) ended Shanto’s good innings with a ball that beat him for speed and hit the middle stump.
Malan caught Afif Hossain (15, not out of 13) at the point as he was juggling, which was a pretty tough leap. Other than that, he and Shakib got Bangladesh to their goal securely and calmly so they could win the series’ first game easily.
Buttler says England ’20 runs short’ with the bat
England captain, Jos Buttler:
“Bangladesh finished the innings [with the ball] well.
“We were in a position to kick on and launch at the end, but we couldn’t manage to get away.
“We were about 20 runs short of about where we would have liked to be with our score, which meant we ended up chasing it a bit in the field.
“Bangladesh came out with a lot of intent and took the chase on right away – they put us under a lot of pressure.”
Shakib hopeful Bangladesh ‘can build’ on win
Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan:
“The way we approached the game was fantastic. I can’t ask any more from my team.
“When bowling, in the first ten overs, we were under the pump a little bit, but no-one panicked; everyone knew what we needed to do and stuck to their plans.
“This is a perfect start. We can continue this and build from here.
What’s next?
England moves to Mirpur for the second game of the three-match T20I series in Bangladesh on Sunday.
