Thetownend.com

Okay, so it's England B against the Banglas, so I'm not imagining this is going to be a well followed series, but I'm genuinely quite interested. Pietersen needs to get back into form, and I'm also interested in seeing Steven Finn bowl a bit.

It starts at stupid o'clock, and with a bit of intrigue as well- Raqibul Hasan from their middle order decided to retire from Test Cricket the day before a game he was going to play in. He's 22. A bit odd perhaps?

it's england, it's test cricket, i'll be listening to TMS. ahhh.

Exactly. In perhaps the more important TMS Teamnews, Agnew has not been rested, and Hughes and Mann are reasonable too. I believe we get Dominic Cork and Mark Butcher though, so the summarizers lineup is somewhat below strength. Oh, and Ali Mitchell to wind up the mysoginists a bit.

i don't think ali mitchell is going, not according to her twitter anyway...

it's a bit of a poor summer of cricket this year, anti-climactic after last summer i suppose.

Lets get Blofeld out there!  Commentating on Bangladeshi buses and pigeons.

The best news of all is that Paul Collingwood is now on Twitter and has already jumped on the 'pick on Swanny' bandwagon.

cool - have to check Collys twitter!

Looking forward to this one - as Im off on Friday!

early start tho - 3:30 AM

My side would be
Cook
Trott
Bell
Pietersen
Collingwood
Prior
Broad (hopefully fit)
Swann
Bresnan
Tredwell
Shahzad
12th Man Wright

Supposedly we're playing 6 specialist bats, which I personally think it pathetic against Bangladesh,

Team likely to be: Carberry, Cook, Trott, Pietersen, Collingwood, Bell, Prior, Broad, Swann, Bresnan, Tredwell.

Don't really fancy only two pace bowlers much, but I suppose Trott and Colly will get a few overs.

Where's Struass?

Resting. Him and Anderson have been given the whole series off.

Onions and Frontbottom have done their backs as well, so we're going to be looking at a rather different bowling attack.

Resting? Missing a test series? Do you think we'll see the likes of Rooney and Gerrard resting for the WC? Crazy.

It's about the equivalent of England vs. Denmark in footballing terms though Rich. They've got that little bit of talent that could cause us problems, but winning should just be pretty much a formality.

I think it's fair enough that Strauss and Anderson were given a rest. Strauss hadn't missed an innings for a stupid amount of time and Jimmy's been our frontline bowler since the tour of New Zealand.

Maybe so but just thought that as a player surely you'd want to play at the highest level and for your country? Just seemed odd to me.

I guarantee we don't go in with just 2 seamers

Finn's in, hope he does well, a real talent.

Bresnan at 10 makes our tail look pretty tasty.

Indeed, not sure we need 6 bats with Swann, Broad, Bresnan and Prior below them, very strong batting line up, Finn should be very interesting with the ball though, the kind of player we need to come good.

100 for captain Cook with a 6! Blimey, this captaincy lark has changed him hasn't it?

we could get 350 today

it's not the captaincy, it's the technical work he's been doing paying off - he's looked more balanced than he's ever been, been timing the ball behind and in front of square and has a clear strategy against spin for the first time - with a number of shots he's clearly spent a lot of time working on.

And he's also scored a couple of 6's !!!

Yep, that was my main point, he's not usually a big hitter of 6s to put it mildly.

Banglas seem to have really dropped a bollock by putting us in to bat here.

Oh dear, Pietersen bowled for 98. I think this calls for my avatar!

99 actually, shame great knock.

Definately, back in form which is a good sign for us. Colly, then Bell, then Prior and then the three quasi-all-rounders. Could be looking at a monster total here.

Day finished 374-3. The 'desh chucked on their opening batsman to bowl the last over. Strange.

Partly, you gotta factor in that the bowling was wank even by Banglas' standards.

Bangladesh are wank. I know they haven't been a test nation for long but you'd think they'd have at least improved a little since it happened. If anything they've got worse.

Has anyone ever seen Bresnan and Paynter in the same room ?  "Hamstring strain" indeed.

Swanny takes a 5 for and the last three wickets go down without scoring, 296 all out after a decent partnership from Rahim and Rubel. Gotta think they'll be following on shortly.

We won in the end then, didn't really learn much. The debutants all did okay, but not exceptionally, and the best players were Swann and Cook, much as could have been expected.

One more test next week, wonder if Shahzad will get a go.

Doubt it, imagine Tredwell will come in for either Trott or (probably) Carbs.

I see Billy's back from Bangladesh and in the line up for us again.

Talking of Cricketer-Footballers, I realised the other day that Tattoo'd Somerset and England Lions all rounded Peter Trego is the very same Peter Trego who used to play for Chippenham. Very exciting.