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Duckett leads charge in pursuit of 273
- Updated: October 30, 2016
Tea England 244 and 100 for 0 (Duckett 56*, Cook 39*) need a further 173 to beat Bangladesh 220 and 296 (Imrul 78, Rashid 4-52)Live scorecard and ball-by-ball details
England’s openers put on a century stand to give themselves an excellent chance of chasing down a target of 273 to win the Mirpur Test. Bangladesh had pushed their overnight position on to a creditable 296 before being dismissed shortly after lunch but Ben Duckett, in particular, took the attack to home spinners to lift English hopes of a rousing finish.
At tea, Duckett and Alastair Cook had knocked exactly 100 off the target with by far their best opening partnership of the tour and laid the perfect platform for what would be England’s highest successful chase in Asia.
Cook and his latest partner had a previous best of 26 together and, given England’s propensity to go from one to three down in short order, it was a timely and significant improvement. Duckett went to his maiden Test fifty, from just 61 deliveries, with a swept four and he brought up the hundred with a fierce pull of Mehedi Hasan’s next ball to further quieten a nervous crowd, who had gathered hoping to see Bangladesh’s first Test win over England.
The scores in each innings so far have gone progressively higher and the Mirpur surface had perhaps slowed a touch – although there was now variable bounce to contend with – but Duckett and Cook both made their first significant batting contributions of the series. Duckett’s penchant for the reverse-sweep was well known in domestic circles but he unwrapped it for the citizens of Dhaka in the fourth over of the innings, striking back-to-back boundaries off Shakib Al Hasan.
There were one or two misjudgements, as was to be expected against a probing spin attack, but Duckett survived to reach his half-century shortly before tea. Mehedi caused him the most problems, a top edge from a cut bursting through the hands of slip when Duckett had 12, while …
