Hmm. Wasn't particularly convincing, was it?

England did many things right. Lose the toss, ensuring nothing Alastair Cook did could make him the game's more negative captain; bat first up with ruthless efficiency in the face of cowed opposition to ultimately set up the victory; pick Steven Finn, a chap who has quite rightly leapfrogged Ajmal Shahzad and Liam Plunkett since arriving in the Desh and looks like he could be hugely exciting until he gets injured playing for the Chennai Chipsticks in next year's IPL thus bringing his seven-match Test career to a sadly premature end.

But there was an awful lot of troubling stuff as well.

The team selection looked flawed at the time and positively mental with the benefit of hindsight.

And it led directly to the shambles with the follow-on and the muddled imprecise cricket that dogged England after the excellent first two days.

The problem with not enforcing the follow-on is that it leads to an inevitable release of pressure. It gives beleaguered opposition respite just as much as weary bowlers and there's no doubt it gave Bangladesh a shot in the arm. England's slipshod second innings only added to Bangladeshi confidence at a time when it should have been rock bottom. (Is there, incidentally, a team less skilled than England at the art of the third-innings set-up?)

The desire to give the bowlers a rest would not have been so pressing had the second spinner been there to take the slack. Ask the bowlers how rested and refreshed they feel now after the pitch was given an extra day to die out completely before their second bowl on it.

More muddled thinking from England: pick four bowlers on an absolute road, then start fretting about their workload halfway through.

There are undoubtedly times when not enforcing the follow-on is the correct course of action, usually prompted by a combination of bowler fatigue and the fear of a ticklish last-day run-chase on a crumbling surface. But I'm surprised by the number of people backing Cook's call here: the lead was gigantic, the pitch was only going to continue flattening out, and there were only 36 overs left in the day when Bangladesh were bowled out. Swann would've bowled 13 or 14 of those, Pietersen a couple more. Could the seamers not give their captain six overs each before stumps?

If the rest of Cook's captaincy had even an iota of wit and imagination to it, maybe it would be possible to accept the decision was taken based on the workload of the bowlers. But his extreme conservatism makes the follow-on call just look like another example of his risk-averse thinking.

But the main problem with Cook's leadership isn't the cagey mindset - in that regard he's just a slightly more extreme version of the man whose boots he temporarily fills.

No, the biggest problem with Cook's captaincy is that it's as dull, unimaginative and mundane as an ITV sitcom. And even less funny.

Throughout the impressive Siddique-Mushfiqur rearguard, Cook resembled a little boy lost, wearing a look that suggested he was increasingly aware he was potentially in the midst of one of the all-time great captaincy snafus. His response to the pressure was generally to put another fielder on the fence when Swann was bowling and to ensure Finn was never allowed near the new ball.

With runs irrelevant, scouts were out on the boundary and gaps left in the cordon - gaps that were only plugged once the ball had been hit there as a handy reminder by the ever-helpful Bangladesh players.

Following the ball isn't always a captaincy crime: if there's one thing worse than the ball sailing through a vacant third slip it's the ball sailing through a vacant third slip twice. But when it appears to be your sole tactic there are problems. Captain Cook: special skills - closing stable doors, appearing to wear eyeliner and making Swann bowl 400 overs unchanged.

Thanks largely to their irrepressible off-spinner England got away it and ultimately won the game handily. Cook was quick to point out that the result is all that matters, proving he could be as tediously predictable a captain post-match as during.

It's doubtful he even believes it himself. England are a curious mix of almost cowardly conservatism and an arrogant sense of entitlement (witness the apparent anger stirred in the England bowlers by Junaid Suddique's appalling refusal to throw his wicket away as casually in the second innings as he did in the first).

They must know that winning this series is not going to make any careers. In this series, the result is all that matters only if it's not an England win.