Before this game Moeen Ali blamed England’s defeat in the third match of the five-game series on the fact they had to bowl eight overs of heavily punished spin. In this, Moeen’s second game in temporary charge in the absence of the injured Eoin Morgan, they bowled 10 – and this time Adil Rashid, Liam Livingstone and Moeen himself spun the team to victory, with the captain playing as crucial a role with the ball as he had a little earlier with the bat. After ending the match with a demonstration of efficient death bowling that will be as morale-boosting as the result itself, England won by 34 runs to level the series and set up a decider on Sunday night.
Moeen’s 28-ball 63, and in particular his vicious assault on a single Jason Holder over, was instrumental in hauling the tourists to a competitive total, on the same Kensington Oval pitch where they successfully, if narrowly, defended 171 last Sunday. After Brandon King and Kyle Mayers had started the West Indies innings by scoring 64 for the opening wicket, with the latter, opening for his country for the first time in his 16th appearance in all formats, particularly impressive, it was Moeen who made the crucial breakthrough, dismissing both openers in successive overs as West Indies fell into a mid-innings funk.
