Bangladesh v Australia First ODI Report Card

Featuring bops, falling behind England and golden ducks

Bops
Grade: B+

The Great Australian Half-Assed Midwinter White Ball Tour of Asia continues with our plucky band of out-of-their-depth heroes moving on to Bangladesh.

After winning the toss and sending Bangladesh in to bat, the men in canary yellow had the good fortune to listen to the Bangladesh national anthem, which is an out-and-out bop. Great news for Australian cricket fans thinking of attending the top end Tests later this year.

Less great news for Australian cricket fans was Bangladesh charging out of the blocks at better than six runs an over.

Sure, they lost Saif Hassan early to a sharp catch from Marnus Labuschagne, who continues his outstanding resurgence as a specialist fielder with a side hustle in bowling gentle medium pace filth.

But then Marnus also dropped a catch. So maybe time for him to revert to the whole batting caper again. Something to ponder at least.

Falling Behind England
Grade: D

Or perhaps that’s being hasty. For the Marnus drop turned out to be merely the first in a series of comical fielding incidents throughout the Bangladesh innings. Chances went down, balls were fumbled, Cameron Green inexplicably underarmed a throw from the boundary to allow Mosaddek Hossain to steal a second run and shield his tail end partner from the strike. Great stuff.

This is clearly an Australian team who’s cast a wary eye at the shenanigans taking place over in England and realised just how far they’ve fallen behind the old enemy in terms of comedy cricket.

Yes, Australia have had their captains caught up in cricketing scandals, but this feels like a proper new level from Ben Stokes. Will he be sacked? Will he resign? Will he - and this is the most important thing - cry on the telly, thereby forcing the warbling hand of the Barmy Army and their rigorously consistent mockery? Much to consider.

A handful of fielding mishaps may seem futile in the face of such high standards of absurdity from England. But it’s a start. Australian comedy cricket can rebuild from here.

Golden Ducks
Grade: A-

Especially since, after Bangladesh reached 8/284 from their fifty overs, Australia began their innings with yet another first ball wicket. This time, it was Matt Short signing off early for comedic golden duck purposes. Marnus soon followed, clearly having no interest in returning to the previous mentioned batting caper. It’s now been seventy (70) international innings since Marnus scored a century (100), which sounds damning, but on the plus side, he’s no more than thirty (30) away from registering another in one (1) way or another.

From there, it was a steady precision of wickets, mostly to stereotype-smashing speedster Nahid Rana, a man utterly fed up with Australians and their constant moaning about helpful Asian spinning wickets.

The game was over as a contest after thirty overs. Green hung around for a while after that, which was annoying to those of us back home who just wanted to go to bed, but thankfully rain came along and brought a Duckworth-Lewis-Stern sanctioned merciful end to it all.

Still, a quite funny 86 run defeat, especially since so little spin was needed to bring the Australians undone. We’re coming for your comedy crown, England.