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England took five West Indies wickets for 39 either side of lunch as they looked to seize control on day one of the third Test at Edgbaston.
Heavy wins at Lord’s and Trent Bridge mean the hosts have already secured the series, and with it the Richards-Botham Trophy, and they are now angling for a 3-0 clean sweep.
West Indies showed enough to prove they were still up for the fight, with the openers putting on 76 before an unbroken sixth-wicket stand between Jason Holder (42no) and Josh Da Silva (35no) took them to tea at 194 for five. But their efforts were undercut by a chaotic period in between.
They lost three for 26 at the end of the first session, Gus Atkinson striking twice and Mark Wood detonating Kirk McKenzie’s middle stump, before top-scorer Kraigg Brathwaite (61) and Kavem Hodge followed at the start of the afternoon.
The tourists chose to bat first and, despite some early swing, kept England waiting almost 22 overs for their first breakthrough.
Atkinson got things moving, finding Mikyle Louis’ outside edge with a nice ball that snaked away and nestled in Jamie Smith’s gloves. Louis, who had taken 21 deliveries to get off the mark and was beaten on a handful of occasions as he struggled to master the early swing, departed for 26 and opened up his side’s vulnerable middle order.
Nobody has proved more prone than McKenzie and he continued a horror sequence at number three, smearing a couple of boundaries before being outgunned by an inswinging yorker from Wood that uprooted middle in dramatic fashion. McKenzie’s knock of 12 left him with a meagre total of 25 in five innings on tour and no shortage of regrets.
Brathwaite was doing well to get through the trying times but lost another partner off the very last ball of the session, Alick Athanaze dragging a pull into his own stumps after Atkinson’s short ball scuttled through low.
West Indies appeared to be crumbling in quick time when their linchpin fell, Brathwaite gloving Wood down the leg side – the culmination of an extended examination around the rib area. Hodge paid for a costly misjudgement, leaving one from Chris Woakes then watching as it nipped back in and clipped the top of off.
At 115 for five an abject collapse was on the cards, a fate that Holder and Da Silva resisted. Both survived lbw appeals in single figures as Ben Stokes gambled with DRS but settled in as the ball softened up.
They batted with care and attention, allowing themselves a couple of flourishes only when Shoaib Bashir’s spin entered the attack, and shored up the score with a partnership worth 79 by tea.
