Shorn of the services of Mark Wood, Interim Head Coach Paul Collingwood described England’s toiling effort in the field on the third day at Antigua as “one of the best efforts I’ve seen in an England shirt and Test cricket”.
West Indies moved into a position of dominance on a flat pitch, with Nkrumah Bonner’s 10-hour 123 giving them a lead of 62 by stumps with one first innings wicket in hand.
England lost Wood at lunch to an elbow injury that could easily rule him out of the remainder of the match and possibly matches later in the series. Collingwood said he would be assessed overnight.
“It’s pretty sore at the moment,” he said. “We’re going to have to assess him overnight and see if he is going to be available for the second innings.
“I’m not too sure (what it is) all I know at this moment is it’s soreness in the elbow. He bowled with it strapped up, it felt okay and then he tried another over in another spell and it didn’t feel so good. He came off and we’ll have to assess.
“He didn’t feel that confident this morning and then he got it strapped up and bowled a good spell for us. We’ll get the anti-inflammatories into him overnight, get him iced up and see how he is tomorrow.”
With Wood able to bowl just five overs, England limited West Indies to 171 runs in 90.1 overs, a run rate of 1.9 throughout the day, which Collingwood was extremely pleased with.
“Absolutely not,” he said, when asked if he wanted more from his bowlers.
“I thought today was probably one of the best efforts I’ve seen in an England shirt and Test cricket. To go for 170 runs and five wickets on that today is a pretty good effort, especially backing that up from two sessions in the field yesterday.
“I thought the fitness levels the guys showed, the attitude in the field was exceptional. It was tough, hard work out there. It’s a placid pitch. It’s a docile pitch. I think all of us expected it to break up a lot more than it has done and start turning. Sometimes you can look at the scoreboard and see you haven’t bowled them out but I thought the attitude was superb today.
“I think if you know anything about cricket, then you’ll realise how that pitch is playing. And when that’s ball goes soft it’s not doing much and I think you’ve seen all the way throughout the day the efforts the bowlers have put in right to the last ball. And of course it’s disappointing not to bowl them out. But you can’t fault the effort.”
Collingwood accepted that England did miss the variety of Wood’s pace.
“You need those kind of guys, 90mph guys who can reverse swing the ball in these conditions,” he said.
“They are gold dust in these conditions. So it will be disappointing if he’s not involved in the second innings but we’ll have to wait and see.”
Ben Stokes, meanwhile, produced a mammoth effort with the ball, getting through 28 overs.
“It’s fair to say that he declared himself fit to bowl in this first innings,” he said.
“None of us were expecting that many overs out of him. Obviously we had to be pretty cautious with the approach but then Ben being Ben, he went out there, felt great and you know he’s done everything so far on this tour to get himself fit. His attitudes has been absolutely superb. And he’s shown today what kind of a warrior he is.”
