Jimmy joy but the questions remain
ENGLAND ended their West Indies misadventure on a high with the sort of win they were expected to deliver much sooner.
For the first time in the series England were the dominant force over the entire match and played as if they were the third-best team in the world as they were at the start of the series, rather than the fifth they have become.
With James Anderson leading from the front with the ball by taking three wickets inside the first seven overs of the Windies chase, the result was never in doubt from the moment Joe Root set the home side a fanciful 485 to win.
Ben Stokes closed out the 232-run victory when he caught and bowled the injured Keemo Paul for a morale-boosting result after the misery of the first two thumpings.
This will give Root something to work with either side of the World Cup when Ireland are their pre-Ashes opponents
But even Root will accept that this was a victory and a performance that should have come at Barbados or Antigua and not here with the series already lost.
But if England can keep Mark Wood fit and firing, without dropping his pace into the summer and beyond then this tour will have been a success of sorts. What, though, England would give to find a firing top-order batsman to go with another effective bowler.
Their top three remains their weakest link, and until they find the players capable of taking a decent chunk of the heat away from Root and Co in the middle order, their dream of being the No 1 side in the world will remain just that, a dream.
Root gave another example of what he is capable of here with his 16th Test ton, but two of his past three hundreds have come when the series has already been decided.
The captain resumed his innings on day four on 111 not out but could only add a further 11 runs before clipping Shannon Gabriel to Shimron Hetmyer at mid-wicket, and with it came the declaration.
It gave Anderson the chance to set the tone with his new-look longer run-up, and just as it worked for Wood it worked for England’s record-breaking bowler who has now played in more Test wins than any England player before him.
He has broken Sir Alastair Cook’s record of 67, and he did it by taking the first wicket in an innings for the 100th time when he had John Campbell stunningly caught by Moeen Ali one-handed in the gully.
Moeen spent rather more time in the slips after that grab and also because Jos Buttler found a way to drop his sixth catch of the series off Stuart Broad at third slip. Buttler has been a middle-order find, but he has dropped 10 of 24 chances since his recall and it is hurting England, and Broad in particular.
Moeen is another man who was recalled to the side this summer after being dropped in New Zealand and in the eight matches he has played since, no-one has taken more than his 44 wickets to put an end to the debate about his role. For the second tour in a row Moeen is England’s leading wicket-taker with 14 in the Caribbean.
Roston Chase just about had time to collect his fifth Test hundred before Paul was the last man to fall as West Indies took the series 2-1.
Wood was named man-of-thematch for his maiden Test five-wicket haul in the first innings and he said: “I thought I’d try and hit the ground running and try and tear it up. I watched Gabriel thunder-bolting them down so I thought I’d better get some of them down.”
Root said of Wood: “Mark bowled fantastically well – it made for great theatre and it was great to be on the field watching it.”
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WEST INDIES bowler Shannon Gabriel has been charged by the ICC for comments he made to Joe Root during the third Test.
Root received widespread praise for responding to the bowler by saying: “Don’t use it as an insult. There is nothing wrong with being gay.”
The suggestion Gabriel may have used language that could have been deemed homophobic will now be investigated by match referee Jeff Crowe, following a charge laid by on-field umpires Kumar Dharmasena and Rod Tucker, who heard comments they believed to be in breach of the code of conduct.
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