The first test between Bangladesh and England at Chittagong was an absolute edge of the seat thriller, as the visitors held their nerve to win the game by a minute margin of just 22 runs. On the fifth morning, it was all-rounder Ben Stokes, who stood up to the task as removed the stubborn Taijul Islam with a beauty to trap him plumb LBW. Stokes followed that up as he dismissed number 11 Shafiul Islam in the same way, to complete a nervous victory for England.
Post England’s dominating performance, skipper Alastair Cook was a content captain. The southpaw, though, admitted that the visitors are bound to make some changes for the next test. Considering the fact that a gruelling 5 match series against India is on cards, it makes a lot of sense for England to rotate their players.
“I’m pretty sure there will be some changes,” Cook said, after England’s win. “If we play the same side early on in the tour, we could have a lot of guys with not much cricket under their belts coming into a crucial Test a bit further down the line. We were clear before we came out here that we would rotate, so I’d imagine there might be a couple of changes.”
“It’s certainly more about rotation. In an ideal world we don’t want to get to India with people having not played much cricket. There are some fine players who didn’t make this team and, with how hot it is and energy levels, to not be playing all seven Test matches will freshen things up. It’s certainly more on the bowling side to start with,” Cook said, elaborating about the move.
Cook also admitted the fact that having a fourth seamer was a big boon for England. “It’s nice having that extra seamer for our side. When it does reverse you can keep the pressure on for longer. If you do go double seam like we did after tea on day four for the first half an hour, we didn’t go anywhere but then you’ve got the option of bowling another seamer. It just suits us at the moment. But, yes, there was a time when I was thinking I’d love another spinner. But you can’t have everything can you?”