Sizzling Swann mops up the tail to get England over line

Published on Tuesday 16 March 2010 20:08

ALASTAIR Cook applauded the continuing brilliance of Graeme Swann after he eased England's nerves and spun the tourists to a 181-run victory on the final day of the first Test against Bangladesh.

After his side laboured for a second consecutive session without success, Swann took three wickets in the afternoon to become the first English off-spinner to take ten wickets in a match since Jim Laker in 1956.

It was a performance good enough to break the considerable resistance of Junaid Siddique (106) and Mushfiqur Rahim (95) and steal the man-of-the-match honours from Cook, who scored 212 runs in two innings.

But Cook, leading his side for the first time in a Test match, was happy to defer to his team-mate, whose haul was the result of nearly 80 overs on one of Test cricket's slowest, flattest tracks.

"It's a really good win because to get 20 wickets on a pitch like that was a fantastic effort," said Cook, after the Tigers' second innings was ended for 331.

"Swanny has got ten himself and to get ten wickets on that pitch was an amazing effort. He has just got so much control of his game right now, he's very easy to captain. He knows the fields he wants and you trust him to wheel away, knowing he's going to make the breakthrough.

"He bowled a lot of overs here so that shows his determination."

The 30-year-old spinner was pleased with his day-five return after a gruelling, often joyless stint yesterday.

"It was horrible taking no wickets, we were really struggling and this morning was tough as well," Swann said.

"But it's been a good 12 months for me and I'm more than happy for it to keep on going."

After England's dominance at the start of the match when they declared on 599 on the back of comfortable centuries for Cook and Paul Collingwood, the inevitable questions had been raised over the viability of Bangladesh as a Test-playing nation.

But their guts and determination over the last two days suggest that they are a rapidly improving unit and Cook insisted it was far from a facile beginning to his captaincy.

"Test cricket is supposed to be hard and it was hard graft for us at the end to get those 10 wickets," he said.

"Full credit to their two batsman and the way they fought. Junaid and Mushy batted very well.

"Last night was probably the worst time for me, towards the end of that session when we'd been in the field all day and couldn't get them out.

"But I'm quite pleased with how calm I kept. We knew they couldn't keep doing what they were doing, we just had to keep believing it would happen and thankfully it did."