Johnson is quick to quell Bangladesh's stubborn resistance

England 326 and 293-5 Bangladesh 15

Richard Johnson did not know whether to laugh or cry when he was invited by the England selectors to tour Bangladesh a week before his wedding. At the last minute James Anderson was advised to withdraw from the five-week trip to rest his injured knee and Johnson, the Somerset seamer, was asked about his availability.

Aware of his predicament, the England and Wales Cricket Board attempted to be sympathetic. They allowed him to travel to Dhaka a day later than the rest of the squad. Johnson's fiancée, Nicola Lock, would have been slightly more understanding about her husband jetting off three days after exchanging vows had the pair not spent the previous week organising their honeymoon.

England's five-wicket hero was due to travel home after this month's six one-day internationals in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka but the selectors will now be searching for an excuse to keep him in Asia for the tougher Test series that lies ahead. At the very least the England Test team should travel to Sri Lanka full of confidence after a rousing display on the third day of the second Test here.

Johnson started the rout when he ripped out the Bangladesh middle order in a hostile 11-over spell that saw him take 4 for 23. The home side's diminutive batsmen had no answer to the bounce he extracted from this pitch and when Johnson knocked Mashrafe Mortaza's off stump clean out of the ground he become the first English bowler since Nick Cook in 1983 to take a five-wicket haul in each of his first two Test matches.

It is not Johnson's fault that the opposition - Zimbabwe and Bangladesh - he has been selected to play against are weak but it does make it difficult to judge just how good he really his. Johnson himself, with 11 wickets at an average of 13.5 - the sixth lowest by an Englishman with more than 10 Test wickets - must wonder what is going on.

While trying to break into the England side he would have continually been told about the huge gulf that exists between county and Test cricket. After two matches Johnson will be aware that one form of the game is appreciably stronger than the other but he must be wondering whether he has got it right.

An indication of how gentle his introduction to Test cricket has been can be gauged by the quality of batsmen he has dismissed. The highest-ranked of Johnson's victims is Stuart Carlisle - the 51st best batsman in the world - and seven of the remaining 10 are placed below 85.

Anybody who has watched Johnson bowl or faced him in the middle is aware of his capabilities. The powerfully built seamer predominantly moves the ball away from the right-handed batsman at a lively pace. He is also said to bowl a "heavy ball". This means his combination of bounce and pace hits the splice of the bat hard and any bowler that manages to do this consistently will trouble far better players than he has so far bowled to.

Johnson was not the only England bowler to have an enjoyable day. Martin Saggers took two wickets on his Test debut. The first was the result of a beautiful delivery that moved away off the pitch and took the edge of the obdurate Mushfiqur Rahman's bat, and the second came when the Kent swing bowler forced Enamul Haque Jnr to top-edge a hook to Matthew Hoggard at fine leg.

With a first-innings lead of 174, England's batsmen at long last took control of the Bangladesh attack, which lost the services of Mortaza, their best bowler, after four overs when he fell awkwardly on his follow-through. Mark Butcher and Michael Vaughan gave their side a racy start but it was the batting of Nasser Hussain that caught the eye.

After boring the pants off everyone during the first two days of this game, yesterday Hussain demonstrated his dashing strokeplay. Once he found his touch - it took him 35 balls to score his second run - it did not appear to matter that he had run his captain out on 25. Hussain and England were rattling along at four runs an over and thoughts had turned to the declaration.

With his century in sight Hussain made a mistake and chipped a simple catch to Mohammad Rafique to be dismissed for 95. Failing to score a century against Bangladesh would have disappointed Hussain - he would then have needed only a hundred against Pakistan to have a full set - but it did not slow down the scoring rate. Rikki Clarke and Chris Read batted as though this was a one-day match and in 23 frantic minutes the pair put on 59 runs.

Stephen Harmison's back injury appears the likeliest reason to keep Johnson on for the Test series against Sri Lanka, and Mrs Johnson may yet feel the loss of a week in Mauritius is a fair exchange for a pre-Christmas fortnight in Sri Lanka and a trip to the Caribbean in March 2004. The suitcase will already be out of the loft.