There will no doubt be renewed calls for Bangladesh to be stripped of their Test status after another abject display at the Riverside where they were put in to bat and bowled out for 104, a lower score than their first-innings 108 at Lord's, in 39.5 overs.

The sense of déjà vu only increased when England batted and Marcus Trescothick (151) pummelled boundaries all over the pitch, as he had at Lord's, with England reaching 269-3 in 48 overs by close of play, a lead of 165 runs. Such was the mismatch of bat and ball that England scored an amazing 223 runs in an extended final session of 35 overs and should now wrap this game up in two days..

Trescothick's 12th Test century dominated the England innings and, so easy was the plunder that by the end he had either got bored, or felt guilty at cashing in against such poor bowling, and was out slogging to the innocuous medium pace of Aftab Ahmed.

In defence of Bangladesh's batsmen it must be said that England's seamers would have been a handful for any team on an awkward pitch of variable bounce and exaggerated movement.

Steve Harmison took 5-38 on his home ground, wreaking havoc with his full-pitched legcutters and, best of all, uprooting the Bangladesh captain Habibul Bashar's leg stump with a very fast, well-directed yorker.

Nearly as devastating for the Bangladesh players in unfamiliar seaming conditions was the sideways movement of Matthew Hoggard, who bowled with great control for his 3-24 after a lacklustre opening spell.

Trescothick's hundred was remarkably, his seventh in his past 13 Tests, two of them against Bangladesh. When one considers that he scored only five of his hundreds in his first 48 Tests, it appears he has learned the art of 'going big' over the past 12 months.

There was an inevitability about the ton as he rarely looked troubled, placing his powerful drives through the covers and pulling murderously at anything short.

In fact Trescothick seemed almost bored after reaching his hundred and began playing shots at nearly every ball. He launched Mohammad Rafique for a spectacular six over long on to bring up the England 200, and lifted Hossain over midwicket for a second six. He slogged the spinner Mohammad Rafique through midwicket and plundered boundaries off the innocuous slow-medium bowling of Aftab Ahmed. His 150 came from 146 balls, his third fifty coming in only 32, before he skied a big swipe at a ball from Ahmed.

Ironically Michael Vaughan (44) had looked in even more sublime form than Trescothick, his batting a thing of real classical beauty as he drove Mortaza effortlessly off the back foot through cover or straight down the ground for four.

But while Trescothick is currently a maker of big hundreds, Vaughan will always find ways of getting out when no one looks fit to bowl at him and Mortaza's legcutter in the corridor of uncertainty, very much his weak area, ended a cameo that suggests the England captain is reaching his best form going into the games against Australia.

By comparison with Vaughan and Trescothick, Andrew Strauss looked woefully out of touch, struggling to eight from 30 balls and lucky to survive one appeal for lbw off Mortaza, before shouldering arms at another ball and being given out.

Analogously with the Lord's game, the blaze of boundaries in the second half of the day, which included nine more in an efficient 57* from Ian Bell, followed the blaze of wickets in the first three hours play, as only Javed Omar (37) and Khaled Mashud (22) reached double figures in Bangladesh's innings.

Poor technique against the moving ball was very much in evidence. Of the five wickets to fall before lunch, Harmison's legcutter to Nafis Iqbal (7) was poked at with no foot movement and edged to slip; Bashar (6) was guilty of toppling to the off side when yorked by Harmison; Mohammad Ashraful (3) failed to get to the pitch of a Simon Jones legcutter and Rajin Saleh (2) poked an Andrew Flintoff short ball fired into his ribs straight to Graham Thorpe at short leg.

Only the fifth man to fall, Omar, had played the moving ball convincingly and he was a little unlucky to be out just before lunch, glancing Hoggard down the leg side to Geraint Jones, one of six catches for the Kent wicketkeeper.

Ahmed had blazed away at Lord's, scoring almost exclusively in boundaries, but he had clearly been urged into a more circumspect approach. His six runs occupied 31 balls, but in the end he could not resist a wide one from Harmison just after lunch and edged to Jones.

Rafique (9) stroked a couple of classy boundaries then clipped a ball to square leg off Hoggard, where Gareth Batty pouched a fabulous one-handed catch that Jonty Rhodes would have been proud of.

The last wickets all fell to shots showing poor technique against balls moving off the seam towards the slips, as a leaden-footed Tapash Baisya (0) was squared up by a Hoggard legcutter, Mortaza (1) handed Harmison a fourth wicket to another legcutter, and Mashud (22) became last man out edging another seaming delivery.

England: MP Vaughan, ME Trescothick, AJ Strauss, IR Bell, GP Thorpe, A Flintoff, GO Jones, GJ Batty, SP Jones, MJ Hoggard, SJ Harmison.

Bangladesh: Habibul Bashar (capt), Javed Omar, Mohammad Ashraful, Rajin Saleh, Aftab Ahmed, Khaled Mashud, Mohammad Rafique, Nafees Iqbal, Anwar Monir, Tapash Baisya, Mashrafe Mortaza.

3 Jun, 2005