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Bangladesh opt to bat first to avoid English whitewash

Bangladesh opt to bat first to avoid English whitewash
Sports

Bangladesh won the toss and elected to bat first against England in the final game of the three-match one-day International series at Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium on Monday.

Last time, Bangladesh lost all of the matches of the ODI series at home was back in 2012 against Pakistan. Later in 2014, they also suffered a 2-0 defeat to India in three-match series.

Bangladesh's cricket renaissance indeed started after that series against India as they became a force in ODI format. While they started winning matches regularly at abroad, they became invincible at home. Before the England series, they had lost just one series at home and that too in 2016.

England coincidentally became the team again to snap Bangladesh's seven successive ODI series victory at home and also brought them on the brink of being whitewashed for the first time at home since 2012.

Despite being reputed to play all out cricket, England nicely changed the gear according to the condition in Bangladesh to win the first two matches.

In the first match, they dealt with Bangladeshi spinners astutely to win it by three wickets and then wrapped up the series with a 132-run victory in the second game.

The venue of the third match, Chattogram had recently become a horror place for Bangladesh, mainly for its placid nature. Just three months ago, they suffered their second biggest defeat in their history at this venue when India crushed them by 227 runs after compiling 409-8.

Bangladesh: 1 Tamim Iqbal (capt), 2 Litton Das, 3 Najmul Hossain Shanto, 4 Mushfiqur Rahim (wk), 5 Shakib Al Hasan, 6 Mahmudullah, 7 Afif Hossain, 8 Mehidy Hasan Miraz, 9 Taijul Islam, 10 Ebadot Hossain, 11 Mustafizur Rahman.

England: 1 Jason Roy, 2 Phil Salt, 3 Dawid Malan, 4 James Vince, 5 Sam Curran, 6 Jos Buttler (capt/wk), 7 Moeen Ali, 8 Chris Woakes, 9 Rehan Ahmed, 10 Adil Rashid, 11 Jofra Archer.