England 2-0 Bangladesh

Well it wasn't overly surprising that England left the test match series against Bangladesh with a 2-0 series win and I am going to rate each of the 12 players that played on how I thought they performed over the course of the series.

Alastair Cook - Had a good series with the bat and without a doubt will be the next captain of the team when Andrew Strauss is out of the way. Scored a brilliant hundred on the final day to help England win the second test. (Rating: 8/10)

Michael Carberry - Only played in the first test and unfortunately for him he couldn't get the big hundred that would stop the selectors dropping him after this test. Probably a one test wonder. (Rating: 4/10)

Jonathan Trott - Had a pretty poor run with the bat scores wise, but was also unfortunately prone to weird dismissals, not to mention he was given out caught off his helmet, will hopefully get more runs this summer when Bangladesh visit here. (Rating: 6/10)

Kevin Pietersen - Played a good innings to help in the final run chase to finish it off with captain Cook also scored a composed 99. Shame he didn't get the hundred he was looking for but some good signs for ahead. (Rating: 7/10)

Paul Collingwood - Had a rarity of a thing, a bad series. It is not often that he gets either no runs or wickets but he batted quite ordinarily at most times and he wasn't available to bowl. Expecting more from him this Summer. (Rating: 4/10)

Ian Bell - Finally showed us exactly what he could do and got the monkey off his back by making a hundred in trying conditions and without any of his teammates making one. Hopefully he will keep it up this year and into the Ashes. (Rating: 8/10)

Matt Prior - Good with the gloves in the first test but lost it a bit in the second test. Definitely still a good batsmen and without a doubt a team player, as even when he is going well he thinks about the team before his own situation. (Rating: 6/10)

Tim Bresnan - Had a fantastic series and some good runs and wickets and should have had his first test match hundred if it was not for a rush of blood to the head. A fantastic prospect and there is no doubt that if we want to play 5 bowlers he can easily bat at number 7. (Rating: 8/10)

Graeme Swann - Man of the series without a doubt. 10 Wickets in the first game and some good bowling in the second means that Swann (who is ranked the number 2 bowler in the world) gets my man of the series award and he was brilliant throughout both test matches and bowled a lot of overs. (Rating: 9/10)

Stuart Broad - Had a quiet series, unfortunately he is going through a bad patch with the bat but his bowling is still good its just unfortunate that the pitches really didn't offer a lot of assistance but he still bowled well and got some key wickets. (Rating: 5/10)

Steven Finn - Wrong place to try and play him, he should never have been given a debut on pitches that would have no bounce or movement. Definitely one for the future though he might want to forget about this tour for now. (Rating: 3/10)

James Tredwell - Took a stunning catch after coming on as sub in the first test before he got his chance in the second. Bowled well in both innings and took some key wickets. He should have played in the first test instead of Finn. (Rating: 6/10)

England put under Pressure and Australia beat New Zealand

The second test match between Bangladesh and England has finally shown us that Bangladesh can play good test match cricket and compete against some of the top teams in the world at this format of the game. It was nice to see them get big runs in the first innings, although that wasn't helped by the fact that England allowed their tail to keep piling on the runs.

After a good innings Bangladesh walked away with a very competitive 419 and things were going well for them when England collapsed to 174-4 before Ian Bell proved that he can score runs when the team needs them the most as he compiled a composed 138 and with good knocks from both Matt Prior and Tim Bresnan ensured that England finished on 496 all out.

Without a doubt England are now back on top but it will be a good test of Bangladesh to see if they can get a draw here and bat ou the last 4 sessions without allowing England a chance at a small total then it will show the progress that they are making and even though it won't be a win it will still be a good test match performance.

On the bowling front it's been a poor tour for Steven Finn but it must be said that neither of the test match pitches have been condusive for his type of bowling, however the other bowlers have made a good go of it with Stuart Broad and James Tredwell bowling well. The two outstanding bowlers have been quite easily Graeme Swann and Tim Bresnan and between the 2 of them they will be hoping to give England at least a chance of snatching victory in the rest of this test.

Elsewhere there was the first test match between Australia and New Zealand and after a Michael Clarke hundred in the first innings the Australians posted 459-5 and after a good bowling performance saw New Zealand bowled out for just 157 there was surely only ever one winner in this match.

The follow on was enforced and it was only thanks to Brendon McCullums 104 and good innings from Vettori and McIntosh that New Zealand posted 407 leaving australia need just over 100 to win the match. 23 overs later and the match was over with the score of Australias last innings standing at 106-0 with opener Hughes making 86 off 75 balls to ensure an easy win in the test match.

Elsewhere the IPL is now in full swing and it is the batsmen that are dominating it at the moment with good knocks coming from the old pros such as Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Andrew Symonds and in particular from the master Sachin Tendulkar. It has also been good to see Ravi Bopara and Eoin Morgan getting good scores for their teams as well.

England win the first test

So the first test between England and Bangladesh ended up the way that everyone thought it would, with a comprehensive England victory but it was a game that seemed to be marred by bad decisions, although in this case it was not the umpires with the bad decisions but the players and the captains in particular.

The first two mistakes were made before the game even began and it was a mistake for each captain, firstly England Captain Cook chose to go in to the game with 3 seamers and just one spinner which would eventually mean Graeme Swann having to bowl around 80 overs himself. Then Bangladesh won the toss and their skipper chose to bowl on what was a fantastic batting pitch, 599 runs later and he may have realised he made a mistake.

There was good runs for Cook who got a test highest score of 173 and Collingwood who got a breezy 145 and they were well supported by Kevin Pietersen getting 99 and Ian Bell a quick 84. After that it was over to Bangladesh and a respectable batting performance saw them get to 296 with Graeme Swann taking 5-90 on a pitch that wasn't actually spinning as far as some people thought it might.

So next question was would England enforce the follow on or not, the answer was not and out they came for a bat to put the game way out of reach of Bangladesh and a quick 209-7 off 50 overs saw that Bangladesh would need to bat out 5 sessions or score a mammoth 512 to avoid a test defeat.

Most pundits where of the opinion that Bangladesh would go down easily on the last day and a half and that it might as well have been called an England win there but Bangladesh seemed to have a different opinion. A fine innings of 106 from Siddique and 95 from Rahim held England up until just before tea on the final day but the runs were just too many for them to chase down as there final innings finished on 331 all out with Graeme Swann taking his second 5 wicket haul of the match to finish with 10-217 and Bangladesh lost the test by 181 runs.

So with the second one starting on Saturday morning it will interesting to see if it will be as one sided as this one was, and also it will be interesting to see if England maintain their one spinner team as surely Swann must be tired after bowling almost 50 overs himself on the final day and a half.

The lack of form of KP

So with England out in Bangladesh everyone thought that it would be a good time for England and more importantly Kevin Pietersen to get some runs under his belt both in the One Day and Test forms of the game, something which he has struggled with of late.

After the One Day Internationals however this does not seem to be a plan that is going well with him getting a highest score of 22 in the 3 games and generally showing for some reason that he cannot play left arm spin very well something which was highlighted when he repeatedly got out to Yuvraj Singh last time we played India and the fact that whenever KP was at the crease they brought him on to bowl.

There is hope however with a 2 game test series coming up that he will be able to get in and get some runs at some point throughout the 4 innings (potentially) although they do have a lot of spinners and he will have to work on his technique against the left handed spinners in particular. The warm up game saw Michael Carberry opening the batting with Captain Cook and it looks as if that is the way they will go for this tour with Andrew Strauss having a well deserved rest before the summer tests back in England.

The bowlers however are not having a good time with injuries to both Ryan Sidebottom and Stuart Broad meaning that they may not make the test matches, however there is more hope for Stuart Broad to play in both. It will be most interesting to see the composition of the side as many people believe that we will go in with 2 spinners which means that Graeme Swann will probably be partnered by James Tredwell.

Even with playing two spinners I presume that they will go in to the first test with 6 batsmen, the keeper then two spinners and two seamers probably using Paul collingwood as the fifth bowler should they need one. So with the first test starting Friday it will be a good chance to see just where England are at and if they can keep up their 100%.