Dropped catches, demerit points, Anderson's 500th and more...
Saturday 9 September 2017 19:49, UK
England were expected to beat Windies at a canter - but the series proved much more hard-fought.
Joe Root's side eventually edged the three-Test contest 2-1 at Lord's, but only after Windies produced what Bob Willis described as one of the greatest turnarounds in sport to rebound from a battering in Birmingham to record a heroic triumph at Headingley.
A pink ball, 19 wickets in a day, the coming of Shai Hope, dropped catches, demerit points and James Anderson joining the 500 club meant the series was all action!
First Test (Edgbaston) - England beat Windies by an innings and 209 runs
A new dawn for Test cricket in England ended beyond dusk on day three with the inaugural day-night Test concluding in dramatic style.
Nineteen Windies wickets tumbled on Saturday in Birmingham, five of them to Stuart Broad, as he surpassed Sir Ian Botham's tally of 383 Test scalps to move second on England's all-time wicket-takers list, behind strike partner Jimmy Anderson - Shane Dowrich Broad's 384th victim courtesy of a nip-backer that hit the top of off stump.
Toby Roland-Jones took the final Windies wicket, Alzarri Joseph, with the much-discussed pink Duke ball as England recorded a thumping victory.
The triumph was set up by big hundreds from the captain and his predecessor, Joe Root stroking 136 and Alastair Cook scoring 243, his fourth Test double ton and second in Birmingham.
Dawid Malan chipped in, too, with a maiden Test fifty in his third match after a tough introduction to the five-day arena against South Africa.
Windies found the pink nut harder to contend with, lasting a combined 92.4 overs, Jermaine Blackwood the only player to pass fifty in either innings with a typically rumbustious 79 not out from 76 deliveries in the tourists' opening dig.
Criticism soon came, with Curtly Ambrose telling the Daily Mail: "In the end it was totally embarrassing. I'm hoping West Indies can compete at Headingley and Lord's because what we have seen so far has been pathetic." Compete at Headingley they did…
Second Test (Headingley) - Windies beat England by five wickets
Few gave Windies a hope in Leeds but Shai Hope rewrote the record books to inspire Jason Holder's side to a stunning victory late on day five.
The 23-year-old headed into the game with an average of 18 and just one fifty in his previous 11 Tests, but scored two hundreds in his 12th as he became the first man in history to score twin tons in the same first-class match at the venue - Hope, described by Windies coach Stuart Law as a "rock" with the potential to be "great", hitting 147 and 118no.
Not that he did it alone, with a win that seemed unfathomable a week earlier made very much in Barbados as Hope's countryman Kraigg Brathwaite scored 134 and 95. The opener put on 246 with Hope in the first innings, 145 with him in the second and threatened to pip him to that slice of Headingley history before he clipped Moeen Ali to slip shortly before tea on the final day. Not that he should have got that far, with Cook spilling a routine catch at slip when he had four.
Bungled catches were a feature of the Test - England shelling six, Windies seven - but Root, a beneficiary of a spillage en route to matching AB de Villiers' record of half-centuries in 12 straight Tests. He readily admitted that his team lost due to a lack of first-innings runs, the hosts totalling just 258 despite a ruddy good sixth Test ton from Ben Stokes, who later received a demerit point after one streaky Hope boundary caused him to swear.
Third Test (Lord's) - England beat Windies by nine wickets
Bob Willis was the one swearing at Lord's - swearing that James Anderson is the best bowler in English conditions there has ever been.
Big Bad Bob made that assertion on the day Anderson became the first Englishman, third seamer and sixth bowler in history to scoop 500 Test wickets, Anderson doing so by dismantling Brathwaite's stumps early in Windies' second dig and moving on to 501 by the end of day two after castling Kieran Powell with a jaffa darted in, darted out and trimmed the off bail.
Not content with his milestone, though, Anderson continued to destroy Windies on day three at HQ, claiming another five wickets to return a career-best 7-42 and skittle the visitors for 177, those bowling figures shading the 7-43 he procured against New Zealand at Trent Bridge in 2008.
It was the second Test-best for an England bowler in the game with the ever-maturing Stokes snaffling 6-22 in Windies' initial 123 all out as he hooped the ball round corners Anderson-style!
All that meant England needed 107 to win the match and the series and they did so 28 overs later - Tom Westley (44no) and Mark Stoneman (40no) hitting timely runs as they hunt spots in England 's Ashes squad during an unbeaten second-wicket stand of 72, after Alastair Cook had been fallen lbw.
Root, therefore, was left unable to try and beat AB's run of fifties but smiled beamingly on the balcony as England secured a second straight win under his stewardship following their success over South Africa.
England and Windies will now contest one T20 international and five ODIs, with each game live on Sky Sports. Watch the T20, in Durham, from 6pm, on Saturday, September 16 on Sky Sports Cricket.
