England tempted to rely on pace for series in Sri Lanka

England 326 & 293-5 dec Bangladesh 152 & 138 England win by 329 runs

Duncan Fletcher was full of praise for Michael Vaughan's side following their 2-0 series victory over Bangladesh, but the England coach still wants more from his players during the remainder of their time in Asia.

After battering Bangladesh to a 329-run defeat in the second Test on Saturday with a ruthless display of fast bowling from Richard Johnson, Matthew Hoggard and Martin Saggers, England will now play three one-day internationals against the same opposition over the next 10 days.

The team which plays in the first of these on Friday will look a lot different to that which won in Chittagong - seven one-day specialists have replaced the seven Test players who return home today - but the result should be the same.

Bangladesh's record in limited-overs cricket, where they have won only one of the 67 one-day matches they have played against Test teams, is similar to that in Tests, where they have now lost 25 of their 26 games.

Fletcher, who described this group of players as the fittest he has worked with, gave his side seven-and-a-half points out of 10 for the way they played over the two Test matches. "I believe we will be able to make up the other two-and-a-half points through playing together as a unit," he said. "The more they play here, the more they will get used to the conditions. Hopefully, the bowlers will stick together and bowl as a unit and the batters will start to convert 70s into hundreds. Batting is hard, though. The heat and fatigue can affect a batsman's concentration. Nasser basically scored two hundreds for us in the last game, when the long outfield is taken into consideration."

He is, however, aware that England's mark will need to be closer to nine if they are to achieve the same success in Sri Lanka at the conclusion of this tour. England are due to play three one-day games and three Test matches there, and the bowlers will not be able to bully the opposition to the same extent as they have here.

Although Mark Butcher failed to adapt to the conditions in Bangladesh, England's top five is unlikely to change in Sri Lanka. But the bowling, and particularly that of the fastish variety, is another matter entirely. James Anderson and Andrew Flintoff, who Fletcher admitted would have joined Stephen Harmison in England's intended fast-bowling line-up for this tour, are once again fully fit, but the performances of Johnson - who won the man-of-the-match award for his nine-wicket display in the second Test - and Hoggard cannot be ignored.

Johnson, who was originally selected in England's one-day squad, but only joined the Test team as a last-minute replacement for Anderson, has now taken 15 wickets and won man-of-the-match awards in the two Tests he has played. The Somerset seamer is, however, due to return home before the Test series in Sri Lanka.

While this is a predicament which will eventually lead to one or two bowlers being disappointed, it is a happy situation for the selectors to be in. "If the guys stay fit we now have a group of five or six fast bowlers we could use and that is very important," Fletcher said. "We would like to be in a similar situation to Australia, where you have three playing and someone like Andy Bichel sitting in the background. Then we can play our best bowlers and not be afraid to give someone a rest every now and then." If Fletcher's views are echoed by the rest of England's selectors, it is possible that not one of the four fast bowlers who bowled England to victory in Chittagong will play in the next Test at Galle.

Bangladesh were outclassed here in the second Test after putting up a reasonable show in Dhaka. Set the unlikely target of 468 to win, the home side's inability to play fast bowling was again exposed against an attack which made the most of a pitch offering greater bounce than most on the sub-continent.

Johnson made the early breakthrough in the second over of the day when Hannan Sarkar gloved a shortish ball down the leg-side. Diving to his left, the wicketkeeper Chris Read took an excellent catch. It was the first of five for this tenacious little cricketer. Read was also in involved in one of the two run-outs that summed up Bangladesh's pathetic effort to save the game.

England finished the job off with the first ball of the 38th over when the home captain, Khaled Mahmud, limply pulled a soft catch to Vaughan at square leg. England have prepared and behaved professionally since they arrived in Bangladesh, but there were times in this match when you did not feel you were watching Test cricket.

The only disappointment for Fletcher will have been the contribution made by England's spinners. In conditions that were expected to help them, Ashley Giles and Gareth Batty took only three of the 40 wickets to fall and these were in the first Test at Dhaka.

England will wait to see what the pitches are like in Sri Lanka before they decide whether to call up another spin bowler into the squad. However, there must be a temptation to ignore the surface and pick an all-pace attack since this is likely to remain England's match-winner.