The Australian team's arrival on Sunday morning at Heathrow was nicely timed as the first cricket news the players heard was that England were about to thrash Bangladesh 2-0 in under four days and a session.

The result itself will hardly have them trembling with fear, but they will notice the scale and ruthlessness of the maulings. They should also be aware that England have won five Test series in a row for the first time since 1969-71 and now won a formidable 10 consecutive Tests at home.

In fact if England's task was to show that they can be as big a bully as Australia against weak opposition they have surpassed their goal, as their performances with both bat and ball over the two Tests actually outdid those of the Aussies in their Tests at home against Bangladesh in 2003.

In the two-Test series at Darwin and Cairns, Australia scored 963 runs in two innings, declaring both times and losing 11 wickets in the process. England have scored about the same number of runs, 975, but lost five fewer wickets.

With the ball, Australia bowled Bangladesh out four times for a total of 733 runs, whereas England have knocked them over the same number of times for 687. In fact, no team has dominated Bangladesh in a two-Test series as easily as England have done in the past two weeks.

The comparison is an especially valid one because Australia were the first side Bangladesh played under coach Dav Whatmore and they have steadily improved since he took over, suggesting that England's task was slightly harder than Australia's. Indeed, Whatmore was initially dismissive of England's chances in the Ashes but has been "very impressed" with the home bowling attack and has slightly moderated his opinion.

Arriving in England on Sunday, Australia might also notice how Marcus Trescothick's cruel dominance of Bangladesh in his innings of 194 and 151 was reminiscent of their own Matthew Hayden's swaggering assaults on weak bowling.

And they might as well ponder on the fact that England possess a young batsman in Ian Bell whose watertight technique and studious calm look ideally suited to Test cricket. His 162 not out was near-perfect technically and he could prove less of a hit-and-miss player at Test level than Australia's most promising youngster Michael Clarke.

Other pluses on the batting side were the sublime form of Michael Vaughan (120 and 44), settling in well at number three in the order, and the runs of Graham Thorpe in both games, suggesting that the rumours of his impending opthalmic deterioration may be a little premature.

The indifferent form of Andrew Strauss is a minor concern though, and he will have to find his touch for the Test matches in the one-day games against Australia and Bangladesh. He looks like a man trying too hard to impose his game on the bowling rather than playing the ball on its merits.

England have also bowled impressively as a unit in both Tests, except in the final innings at the Riverside where a touch of fatigue and complacency set in until Matthew Hoggard's burst of wickets at the end. His 8-97 in the match makes a nonsense of some of the comments made about him from the Sky commentary box during the game.

For the best part of two games, however, the England quartet looked like a pace unit without a weak link, offering four different bowling styles, and spearheaded by the born-again Steve Harmison, who was approaching his best in the first innings at the Riverside, with 5-38. The great thing for Michael Vaughan is that if one of the four is getting hit he can rely on one of the others to tighten the screw again.

Bangladesh belatedly showed their innate talent in the second innings as three of their batsmen reached fifty, Habibul Bashar (63), Javed Omar (71) and Aftab Ahmed (82*). Thankfully for them, they have something to take away from the series other than the abject humiliation they had suffered up to that point.

However something needs to be done about the problem of Bangladesh's inadequacy at this level. The notion of a second tier of Test cricket is not the answer because too few nations possess professional infrastructures.

So the best short-term solution is to allow them to guard their Test status, but exclude them from the ICC league table and restrict the amount of Test cricket they play. This would free up more time for 'A' tours, or u19 games, giving them the opportunity to develop their cricket away from the harsh Test environment.

5 Jun, 2005