England back on Cricket World Cup track with Bangladesh win
England captain Jos Buttler has praised his side’s bounce back after the defending Cricket World Cup champions roared to a 137-run victory over Bangladesh in Dharamshala.
Dawid Malan knocked 140 and Joe Root added a further 82 in the north of host country India as England reached 364 runs from their 50 overs.
Bangladesh’s response saw Liton Das amass 76 runs and Mushfiqur Rahim add another 51 but The Tigers couldn’t pounce and were restricted to 227.
England impress
Reece Topley impressed with the ball and took four wickets for 43 runs while Chris Woakes took two of his own – four other bowlers took a scalp.
“[It was a] really good performance, we bounced back from a disappointing first game. We stuck to our fashion and played in the way we wanted to play,” captain Buttler said.
“I still feel like there’s still areas we can improve. The back end of the innings we would’ve liked to get a bit more. That’s the one area we could improve.
“One of the challenges of this tournament will be reading the conditions well. We have great guys on the bench and we can go with different balances of spin and seam.”
Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan said: “It was colder weather than the last game, you could even see the snow. That could have helped our bowlers, but we didn’t start well enough. If you give them a sniff, they will always come hard.
“We had a good plan, but we couldn’t execute. The ball swung nicely for five or six overs, but we couldn’t land the ball often enough.
“They could have scored 380 or 390, but we restricted them well.
“It’s a long tournament and we can’t put our heads down. We have to move on and think about all of the positives we have been doing, focus on one game at a time.”