‘ Batsmen were trying to make them suffer’

Moe en Ali spoke of his desire to make the West Indies“suffer” after launching England’s push for victory at Headingley.

With 14 fours in a fluent 84, Moeen was the aggressor as England moved into a position of dominance, a fanciful notion at the start of the day, when they led by only two runs with seven wickets in hand.

The usually placid Moeen revealedhis darker side when admitting he hoped to stretch the tourists as much as possible when he was batting.

He said: “We felt like their heads went down pretty quickly after tea. We were trying togo up five runs at a time and keep going, keep burying them almost, make them suffer in terms of keeping them out in the field.

“Their bowlers were getting tired, there wasn’ t much going on and t hey were a bit down I guess as a side.

“We didn’t try togo out and be positive, it just came off. I think that was due to the way the guys played up top, we kind of pounced on it a little bit.

“I feel with the team we have and the strength we have, we were capable of being in this position.

“We’ re very, very happy to be in this position, at the start of the day we probably wouldn’t have thought we would be and it’s fantastic.”

Windies bowling coach Roddy Estwick is not writing off their chances of victor y, but he said: “Hope - fully the boys can play very well but the key thing for us is that we’ve shown improvement.”