England edged past Bangladesh by four wickets in a rain-curtailed match at the Assam Cricket Association (ACA) Barsapara Stadium in Guwahati on Sunday.
Having won the toss first, Bangladesh elected to bat. Mehidy Hasan top scored for the team with 74 runs off 89 balls. Apart from Tanzir Hasan’s 45 runs, no other batter made any significant contribution to the game.
Bangladesh managed to put up 188 runs on the board for the loss of nine wickets in their allotted 37 overs as rain played spoilsport again.
For England, Reece Topley took three wickets, while David Willey and Adil Rashid picked two wickets each. Sam Curran and Mark Wood managed to pick a wicket each to restrict Bangladesh for a lowly total.
Coming in to bat, opener David Malan was dismissed early in the first over itself by Mustafizur Rahman. He then also dismissed fellow opener Jonny Bairstow for 34 runs.
Moeen Ali scored a very important 56 as 30 from skipper Jos Buttler and 26 runs from Joe Root ensured England reached the total of 197 losing six wickets in just 24.1 overs with the target adjusted by the Duckworth–Lewis–Stern method.
Hasan Mahmud, Shoriful Islam, Taskin Ahmed and Nasum Ahmed each picked a wicket, but were unable to stop England from marching away with the win in the warm-up match.
It may be noted Guwahati was selected to host several warm-up matches in the build up to the mega event, that is, ICC Cricket World Cup 2023.
However, fresh spells of rain over Guwahati meant the match between India and England was washed out entirely, while today’s match was also affected. The effect of a disjointed warm-up on India’s preparations for the World Cup remain to be seen.
