DHAKA: England coach Trevor Bayliss knows there is no quick fix to his side’s batting problems against spin but hopes that their recent exposure to conditions in Bangladesh will help them in their five-Test series against India, starting next week.

After a narrow win in the opening Test against Bangladesh in Chittagong, England suffered an astonishing collapse on the third day of the second match at Dhaka, losing 10 wickets in a single session in their second innings.

Next up for Alastair Cook’s men is a testing series in India, starting on Nov 9, on spin-friendly pitches similar to those England struggled with against Bangladesh.

“I think, from a batting point of view, there’s been some good signs during this series,” Bayliss said. “We don’t come across those types of wickets very often at all, or at all. The only thing you can do is experience it more often. There’s no quick fix but, as we saw, there were batters in the two Tests that were able to bat for a period of time and score runs.

“If they can do it once they’ve got it in them but it’s just about doing it more often and more consistently and learning from those innings.”

Gary Ballance could muster only 24 runs in total, recording single-digit scores, and the 26-year-old’s position at four in the order would come up for discussion, according to Bayliss.

“I’m sure that will be one of the things we discuss,” said the 53-year-old Australian. “It was one of the things we discussed before the series started, the different options we have available to us going forward, so that we weren’t surprised by anything.

“There will be a number of players that we will be discussing and what we might think is our best and strongest team.”

Meanwhile, former captains Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain said England’s spinners had been shown up by Mehedi Hasan after the teenager starred in the series with 19 wickets.

“It says everything about the dearth of good slow bowlers in England that the four they have chosen in this two-Test series have all been comprehensively out-bowled by a 19-year-old newcomer,” said Hussain in his Daily Mail column.

Atherton, writing in The Times, also used Mehedi’s form as a means of criticising the tourists’ specialist slow bowlers.

“His excellence put the dismal efforts of England’s spinners, who only bowled eight maidens in the match, into focus.”

Published in Dawn November 2nd, 2016