[Shubho]

As much as I hate to admit it, Kenya can do more damage to the top teams than Bangladesh.

In Steve Tikolo, they have a captain who can single-handedly take the attack to the opposition.

Furthermore, you won't see the Kenyans playing amateurish shots in the face of some serious pace bowling.

They telecast the BD v SA match live on Sky Sports Extra here in England. What an embarrassment! I must say I was jumping up and down with joy once we crossed 100. What a relief!

As usual, the top order batsmen were clueless against Ntini, Pollock and Donald. Most of the time they were attempting shots which weren't on. Annoyingly, they kept paddling the bat on the off stump.

There were five slips, which means more than half the team is behind the batsman on strike...and what do the Bangladeshis do?...they insist on playing the balls behind the wicket...and thus safely into the hands of the slips. Have these guys learnt nothing from their outing at the ICC Champions Trophy?

And for God's sake, what is Al Shahriar Rokon still doing in the team? His batting average must be hovering somewhere around the 5-6 mark by now. So much for being a top order batsman. He ducked to an Ntini delivery that he could easily have played defensively. In fact, he ducked so low, that his bat was half way in the air, and sent the ball flying to the slips.

South Africa were having so much fun out there, that between each over, all five slips raced each other from crease to crease.

All the bastmen were a painful sight to watch. At 26/4, I had to change over to the Movie Channel for a while, because my uncle's blood pressure was racing up due to his frenetic and frequent angry outbursts. When I changed back, Kapali was making amends, but it didn't take long for things to go pear-shaped.

Sanwar Hossain was an embarrassment through and through. He looked as if he didn't want to be on strike, and had Javed Omar run out because he couldn't wait to give the strike away to his partner. And what a freakish way to get out himself.

To return to the topic at hand, I think the Kenyans are a whole lot more certain and confident about their batting. They certainly don't look scared, although one or two sometimes look out of their depths. Tikolo is awesome. Odumbe is competent. Ravindu Shah is often pretty classy. Kennedy Obuya (formerly Otieno) is useful, but can sometimes be over-awed by the occasional fast bowler.

They are a competent side. They certainly bat better than we do. Their bowling isn't the best, but then neither is ours.

Talha, Manjurul and Tapash were all quite expensive, especially against a Herschelle Gibbs in top form. But if anybody else saw the match live today, they will have seen that the Bangladeshi bowlers rarely ever beat the batsmen with pace. There was a solitary (and rather half-hearted) appeal for lbw. Otherwise the batsmen found no problems in dispatching the ball to all parts of the field.

Finally, Kenya have developed some good talent. After today's woeful performance, I'm unsure whether there is any truly exciting talent in Bangladeshi cricket. God! Let it not be so!

But, yeah, on the whole, Kenya's ODI performance suggests they deserve test status more than we do. Aside from that, the best indicator that they're better than us is the head-to-head statistic: Kenya 5, BD 1. Makes pretty sad reading.