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February 4, 2010
Posted by Mike Holmans on 02/04/2010 in Mike Holmans
Opportunity knocks

It was inevitable that Alastair Cook would be an England captain © Getty Images

England's forthcoming tour of Bangladesh is going to offer several players an opportunity to make an impression. The Tigers' fans will be hoping for the big upset, but the interest for English fans should really lie in what is revealed about the bench strength.

The main window is the one opened by the absence of Andrew Strauss, or rather the two, since he has one job as captain and another as opening batsman. There has been some adverse comment on his absence but it seems misplaced to me. No one bats an eyelid at Jimmy Anderson missing the tour because of the knee strain which was affecting his bowling, yet Strauss is not supposed to recover from the brain strain which was causing his batting to get flabby towards the end of the tour [of South Africa].

And he's entitled to a brain strain: he started 2009 by being hastily installed as captain, then had to form a relationship with a new head coach, win the Ashes from the underdog position and lead the team through a creditable series in South Africa, and in the meantime succeeded in transforming the ramshackle nonsense of the ODI side into a moderately competitive international 50-over team. After a year like that, any captain could do with a breather.

So that gives Alastair Cook an outing in his first attempt at captaining England. It was inevitable that he would be an England captain: he is expected to open the batting until at least 2020 and it would be unheard of, for an England player to last 15 years in the top order without being captain for some of them. Strauss is liable to be around for another three years or so, by which time Cook will be 28 and in his prime, so he makes a pretty logical choice as deputy.

Michael Carberry is unlikely to get that many opportunities as the reserve batsman behind a settled opening pair, but I hope that they decide to use him rather than shuffle the established batsmen around so that both Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott can play with at least one of them having to play out of position because playing in Asia usually demands two spinners. James Tredwell is probably the player with the most to gain from this tour because the position of second spinner is definitely up for grabs. He does not seem to be more than a conventional county off-spinner, but that's what most of us thought about Graeme Swann 18 months ago, and we've had to revise our opinion since then.

And it is not really an option to go into Tests in Asia with only two frontline pace bowlers. Broad is a given, but Graham Onions is the only one I'd be even vaguely happy with as a sole second paceman. Ryan Sidebottom has the seniority but looked to be well off the pace at the Wanderers, much as Makhaya Ntini had done in the first two matches, and I'm not sure that he deserves to be picked. If they have the sense to leave Sidebottom out, then we ought to get to see whether Liam Plunkett or Ajmal Shahzad have any prospects. The other option is Luke Wright, but what England do not need right now is a batsman who bowls a bit, whereas Plunkett and Shahzad are bowlers who bat a bit. Plunkett's a big hitter like Swann while Shahzad is a proper batsman like Broad, but the real interest is their bowling. Plunkett is probably the better bowler now, but Shahzad is improving rapidly and may well offer more for the future.

So, even if England don't have any dramas and put their opponents to bed in an orderly fashion, there should be a fair amount of interest in the newcomers (or, in Plunkett's case, old-comers having another go).

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Shanaka Amarasinghe
Shanaka Amarasinghe Shanaka Amarasinghe Possessing the best disguised googly in Sri Lanka (because no one has ever really seen it), Shanaka is the finest legspinner to never have played top-level cricket. He is a popular cricket analyst and host of The Score, the No. 1-rated, if slightly infamous, sports show on radio in Sri Lanka. While in England playing rugby, he earned his LLM at King’s College and is a lawyer by training if not inclination. He is also an actor, a journalist, a writer, and thinks he is a comedian.
Mike Holmans
Mike HolmansMike Holmans, a database consultant by profession, has spent thirty summers (and a few winters) going to the cricket. Brought up in one and working in the other, his dearest wish is for a season to end with Yorkshire winning the county championship by beating runners-up Middlesex by one wicket with five minutes to go. If it’s also a summer when England win the Ashes, so much the better.
Michael Jeh
Michael JehMichael Jeh Born in Colombo, educated at Oxford and now living in Brisbane, Michael Jeh (Fox) is a cricket lover with a global perspective on the game. An Oxford Blue who played first-class cricket, he is a Playing Member of the MCC and still plays grade cricket. Michael now works closely with elite athletes, and is passionate about youth intervention programmes. He still chases his boyhood dream of running a wildlife safari operation called Barefoot in Africa.
Saad Shafqat
Saad ShafqatSaad Shafqat takes special pride that his cricket-watching life began during the three-month interval between Javed Miandad's debut Test in Lahore and Imran Khan's 12-wicket haul at Sydney. Although a practicing neurologist based in Karachi, cricket has never been far from his activities. He has co-authored Javed Miandad’s autobiography Cutting Edge and has been a contributor to Cricinfo since 2005. His regular column Reverse Swing appears fortnightly in Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English daily.
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