Bashir at the double as England stay on top against West Indies
NOTTINGHAM, United Kingdom (AFP) — England off-spinner Shoaib Bashir took his first Test wickets on home soil as a promising morning for the West Indies in the second Test turned sour on Friday.
West Indies captain Kraigg Brathwaite and fellow opener Mikyle Louis survived a testing first hour of the second day at Trent Bridge.
But Louis and Kirk McKenzie then gifted their wickets to Bashir with woeful shots, either side of Brathwaite falling for a well-made 48 to fast bowler Gus Atkinson.
West Indies were 89-3 in reply to England’s first-innings 416 at lunch on Friday, a deficit of 327 runs, with Bashir having taken 2-30 in eight overs.
This is England’s first Test since veteran spearhead James Anderson’s retirement from international duty with 704 Test wickets — the most by any fast bowler — following the hosts’ thumping innings and 114-run win in last week’s first Test at Lord’s.
And it is also England’s first home Test since 2012 without either Anderson or his longtime new-ball partner Stuart Broad, who bowed out after last year’s Ashes.
Chris Woakes took the new ball in partnership with Atkinson, fresh from a spectacular 12-wicket haul on his Test debut at Lord’s.
Brathwaite was soon into his stride, cover-driving Woakes’s fifth ball for four.
But the real injection of pace came when Mark Wood, recalled after Anderson’s exit, was brought on and surpassed speeds of 96 mph (154 kph) in his first over.
The West Indies were 48-0 off 14 overs, but England captain Ben Stokes’s decision to bring on Bashir — who didn’t bowl at all at Lord’s — rather than himself was quickly rewarded.
Louis, on 21, skyed a slog-sweep with Harry Brook holding a fine running catch to leave the West Indies 53-1.
Brathwaite, bidding for just his second fifty in nine Tests, had looked assured in a 72-ball innings featuring eight fours until he could only fend a rising Atkinson delivery straight to Ollie Pope at short leg.
McKenzie’s ugly swipe across the line off the 20-year-old Bashir — who was not even born when Anderson made his Test debut — gave Stokes a simple catch at mid-on.
England were all out on Thursday after Pope, dropped twice, top-scored with 121 in an innings featuring Ben Duckett’s rapid 71 and Stokes’s 69.
