England vs. West Indies, First Test: Day Three Review

Posted on May 19, 2012 by James Knight in Tests

West Indies 243 and 120/4 (Chanderpaul 34*, Samuels 26*, Swann 1/21)

England 398 (Strauss 122, Bell 61, Gabriel 3/60)

West Indies trail by 35 runs with six second innings wickets in hand.

In a sentence

England were unable to really press home their advantage in the early part of the day, but taking three wickets for no runs just before tea put them in a winning position.

Player of the day

We had a poll down in the 51allout bunker to try to decide who should receive this most coveted of awards. Unfortunately, we think it might have been hijacked; Kirk Edwards won by a mile. We toyed with the idea of writing a really sarcastic section applauding him for his superb haul of 13 runs in five innings on this tour so far, before deciding that wouldn’t be just too mean. We pride ourselves on fairness and being as positive as possible towards young players, after all.

There wasn’t really an outstanding performance on day three, so we’ll give it to Lord Bell because his cover drive is sexual.

Moment of the day

In each innings West Indies have started reasonably well, with Adrian Barath and Kieran Powell sticking around longer than anticipated but having made their way to 36 this time Barath edged Bresnan behind and began a mini-collapse. Powell threw his wicket away to the age-old bouncer trap before Darren Bravo threw Edwards’ wicket away for him with the ‘yes, no, wait, shit, sorry’ trick he must have picked up as Shiv Chanderpaul was doing it to him in the first innings. Nobody fancied a fightback as it was, but for the top order to continually gift wickets to the opposition is criminal and realistically blew any slim chance there may have been.

Outlook

Despite a good fifth wicket stand towards the end of today, it still remains a question rather more of when than if England finish this game off. One more wicket exposes Ramdin, who is a reasonable batsman but unlikely to do much damage in tough conditions against a good attack, and the tail, which contains no reasonable batsmen. The weather doesn’t look likely to save the tourists either. Put the gin on ice.