Dan Jones: Bangladesh breathe life into Test cricket with performance against England

Notwithstanding that naked prejudice, I still believe that Bangladesh and England showed this weekend that there is much life left in the longer format.

For all that Test cricket is maligned, there are two ingredients that I think will always produce an exciting, engaging match.

The first is a pitch that favours a genuine week-long contest: which has enough for bowlers of all speeds to work with throughout the course of a game, but on which patient, concentrated and skilful batting can prosper.

The second is players who want to be playing Test cricket, and who go at the game with all they have.

The First Test in Bangladesh had both. There was a track on which spinners could open the bowling with a new ball and attack the top order, but on which good fast bowlers — Stokes and Stuart Broad — were able to generate a yard of extra pace and reverse the ball.

It was a low-scoring match, in which no side made more than 300 and no batsman made a century, but the pitch was playable enough for Stokes and Jonny Bairstow to construct a vital partnership of 127 runs, and for Sabbir Rahman and Mushfiqur Rahim to put on 87 for Bangladesh’s sixth wicket as they chased victory. Most importantly, England and Bangladesh are taking this truncated series very seriously.

We are attuned to thinking that cricket’s millennial generation is only interested in the lucrative T20 circuit, where there is money in the pot and traditional cricketing technique has been hurled out of the window.

Try that on Mehedi Hasan (left), the 18-year old who made his full international debut against England in Chittagong, finished the match with seven wickets, and appeared to have been born for the long game. Or indeed on Sabbir, moved to despair when he ran out of partners during yesterday’s final run-chase. Watching Joe Root bend to console him as he crouched, disconsolate, on his haunches stirred memories of Andrew Flintoff comforting a defeated Brett Lee at Edgbaston in 2005.

England’s 22-run win against Bangladesh in 2016 has no chance of being remembered as a great contest in the league of that two-run Ashes classic.

Chittagong is more likely to be noted as a statistical oddity, in which the DRS system, soon to be adopted by India, overturned more umpires’ decisions than in any other match in history.

For me, the First Test was an advertisement for Test cricket, an argument for its continuing importance and a bloody good spectacle. Bring on the Second, and many beyond that, too.