Alastair Cook takes front seat with England in Bangladesh

England's stand-in captain, Alastair Cook, who leads England in an international for the first time in the first ODI against Bangladesh in Mirpur on Sunday, is so new to the job that his team-mates joke that he still wants to sit at the back of the bus. England's players are confident that Andrew Strauss's decision to opt out of the Bangladesh tour and give Cook an experience of captaincy – bus positions included – is a wise one. But Bangladesh's Australian coach, Jamie Siddons, imagines that it could be a dreadful mistake. "I hope it bites them on the bum," he said. England have beaten Bangladesh in their previous eight ODI matches, which makes them the only Test-playing nation whose nether regions remain entirely unscarred by Bangladeshi teeth marks. The fact that they return to Dhaka to play Bangladesh in next year's World Cup will make them more anxious to keep it that way. Even Australia are included in Bangladesh's 11 ODI victims in matches against major opposition. Siddons, who was Australia's assistant coach when they lost to Bangladesh at Cardiff nearly five years ago, needs no reminding of that. Andrew Symonds caught the coach in such an inebriated state that morning that there was less debate about where he might sit as to whether he could stand up. Siddons knows that England will risk in this three-match series not just an inexperienced captain, in Cook, but an equally raw opening batsman in Craig Kieswetter, whose prolific form in the week since he became English qualified has made his one-day debut at the national stadium certain, but who remains an unknown quantity. Siddons has barely been back in Bangladesh for 24 hours – stopping off in Australia after their tour of New Zealand for personal reasons – and admits that he has scant knowledge of Kieswetter's style. "Organisations and individuals have their own choices to make about whether they come here or not," Siddons said. "But I hope it bites them on the bum at the end of the series, and that the opener they have brought instead of Strauss isn't good enough. We know very little about Kieswetter, but we are hoping that the conditions will bring him under. "We are a developing team and play very well in our conditions. We are capable of very bad patches when teams can exploit us, but we are reducing those moments. England will need to be at their best to beat us. They have left a couple of key players behind and that might make a difference. "The last 12 months we have been going really well. We are still a team of 22- and 23-year-olds. I can see England coming here when our guys are 26 and people saying they haven't a chance – unless they improve a lot in the meantime." Pom-baiting remains Australia's favourite national sport and Siddons, who has the most thankless coaching job in cricket, must take his recreation where he can. He imagined when he left New Zealand that he had persuaded his most dynamic if unreliable batsman, Mohammad Ashraful, not to take a rest, only to arrive back in Dhaka and find that he had done just that. A case perhaps of the bum-biter bit. Stuart Broad finds himself the most capped England bowler on tour – just 57 ODIs and 26 Tests. Not only does an inexperienced attack have to cope with the absence of Strauss, they must also function without a bowling coach, while the ECB chase candidates to succeed Ottis Gibson. Self-reliance is essential on this tour and Broad believes that in the short term this will be no bad thing. "Everyone will learn a lot from this tour," he said. "No one thinks it will be a walkover. I think Straussy took a wise decision in having a break," he said. "He needs to be fresh for future challenges and with a busy summer, the Ashes and World Cup coming up during the winter, it's a massive challenge and a tired captain can affect the side. "I've already had five or six captains in my three years of playing for England. Cooky has captained all through the age groups and is quite experienced in the role. He still sits at the back of the bus and gets involved in the banter. We're trying to push him to the front of the bus because that's where the captain sits." England (probable): Cook (captain), Kieswetter, Pietersen, Collingwood, Morgan, Prior, Wright (or Tredwell), Broad, Swann, Bresnan, Sidebottom. Bangladesh (from): Shakib Al Hasan (captain), Mushfiqur Rahim (vice-captain/wicketkeeper), Tamim Iqbal, Imrul Kayes, Zunaed Siddique, Aftab Ahmed Chowdhury, Mahmud Ullah, Naeem Islam, Masrafe Bin Mortaza, Abdur Razzak, Rubel Hossain, Shafiul Islam, Sohrawordhi.