Bangladesh Made History in Darwin, Then Were Bowled Out for 64 in Mackay
A first Test win on Australian soil, then their first Test with both innings under 100. Bangladesh's two-match tour of Australia finished level at 1-1 and looked nothing like a drawn series.
Bangladesh's two-Test tour of Australia has finished 1-1, and no drawn series in recent memory has contained two results this far apart.
Darwin: the first win on Australian soil
At Marrara Oval, Bangladesh won by nine wickets. Australia were dismissed for 198 in the first innings, their lowest Test total against Bangladesh. Hasan Mahmud took six for 55, the best innings figures any Bangladesh bowler has managed against Australia, and finished with nine for 111 in the match.
Bangladesh replied with 426. Tanzid Hasan made 101 from 197 balls, the first Test century by a Bangladesh batter in Australia. Josh Hazlewood took six for 89 in that innings and reached his 300th Test wicket doing it, which on any other day would have been the headline.
Australia's second innings of 284 was built around Cameron Green's 104 from 201 balls, but a target of 57 was never going to be enough. Mominul Haque hit the winning runs.
It was Bangladesh's first Test win in Australia at the third attempt, and their first Test in the country for 23 years.
Mackay: the collapse
Ten days later, at the Great Barrier Reef Arena, Australia won by an innings and 51 runs inside two days.
Bangladesh were bowled out for 64 and then 95. It is the first time they have been dismissed under 100 in both innings of a Test. Mitchell Starc took six for 12 and four for 39, ten in the match, and was named player of the match and of the series.
The strange part is that Bangladesh bowled well. Shoriful Islam took seven for 48, a maiden Test five-wicket haul and the best figures any Bangladesh fast bowler has recorded, and held Australia to 210. On most scorecards seven for 48 wins you a Test match. Here it earned a first-innings deficit of 146.
Reading the two together
The temptation is to decide which match was the accident. Neither reading survives contact with the scorecards.
Darwin was not a fluke: Bangladesh out-bowled Australia across four innings and their highest score in the match, 426, was made batting first against a full-strength attack. Mackay was not a collapse of nerve either: a side that has just won a Test in Australia does not forget how to bat in ten days.
What both matches had in common was a bowler running through a top order early. Starc did it in 22 balls at Mackay; Hasan Mahmud did it more slowly at Darwin. In a format where first-innings runs decide most matches, an early spell that takes five is worth more than any amount of batting depth behind it.
Cameron Green finished as Australia's leading run-scorer for the series with 184. Najmul Hossain Shanto led Bangladesh's with 115.
Mackay also became the 12th Australian venue and the 127th in the world to host a men's Test.
The table
The two results split the World Test Championship points evenly, 12 each. Bangladesh's is the more valuable in context: they sit fourth in the current cycle, above India, which is not a sentence anybody expected to write this year.