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It’s win toss, win match in the Caribbean, as five games into this white-ball tour and all five have been won by the team for whom the coin fell.
England were the beneficiaries this time, as they won by seven wickets to take a 2-0 lead in the five-match T20 series. As the coin settled, Jos Buttler smiled, and his opposing captain Rovman Powell stuck a joking punch in his ribs. They knew how much this match, threatened by the potential for rain and starting at 4pm, rode on a matter of heads or tails.
Dew rises around the world. But as interim head coach Marcus Trescothick explained last week, it is the combination of dew – making the ball wet and difficult to bowl with in the second innings – and the nature of wickets in the Caribbean – slow and stoppy in the day, fast and slick with dew in the evening – that makes the shift in conditions so dramatic.
Matches played at the Kensington Oval during the Caribbean Premier League start at night, somewhat equalising the advantage of batting second, but games this series start at 4pm in order to better suit a UK TV audience. The result is a perfect storm for conditions to have the maximum influence across the game.
“We spoke about it before this game,” said Buttler after the match. “That we must have a mindset that if we do lose the toss, we can still win.”
West Indies skipper Powell added: “The best case is for the games to start at 7pm. When we looked at the schedule and we realised it would start at 4pm, we knew that would be a problem.”
But you still need to capitalise on your luck, and in favourable bowling conditions, England did exactly that, as an excellent bowling display was backed up by a Buttler masterclass as he smashed 83 from 45 balls.
To get England going, Jofra Archer and Saqib Mahmood were superb with the new ball as both got the ball swinging wildly. Archer was always on target, Mahmood was not, sending down six wides in his opening three overs in search of the magic ball – which he duly found when trapping Roston Chase lbw.
Archer was at his unplayable best, as he got the ball to swing viciously away from the left-handed Evin Lewis, the ball rising and taking the glove of the opener on its way through to the keeper. Such was Archer’s dominance, when Chase walked out at No 4 he was greeted with two slips, a leg slip and a short-leg.
Mahmood and Archer are great friends, with Mahmood often staying with Archer on the island in their spare time. Before this series, Mahmood even enquired about playing a club game for Archer’s team Wildey CC as part of his preparation, but the match, spread over two weekends, didn’t allow for it.
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It was an altogether impressive bowling performance from England. Sam Curran entered the attack in the eighth over and delivered a maiden, Adil Rashid regularly bowled with a slip and a leg-slip as West Indies were left struggling in challenging conditions, before 32 runs from the final two overs lifted them to 158.
Phil Salt was a centurion on Saturday night, but was dismissed for a golden duck on Sunday, as he spliced a drive to Brandon King at short cover off the bowling of Akeal Hosein from the first ball of the innings.
But that would be the only jeopardy during the chase. Buttler, batting at No 3 for only the third time for England, took a while to get going, but then launched into the type of form that has made him one of the most watchable cricketers in the world for the last decade. Faced with Gudakesh Motie, Buttler hit him over the corner of the Worrell, Weekes and Walcott Stand. As they looked for the ball, Buttler flashed his bicep with a wink to his teammate Will Jacks.
“Probably not actually,” Buttler said as to whether he’d ever hit a bigger six. “I think the four months of rehab, there’s been quite a lot of work in the gym.”
Ahead of the series, Buttler said his main priority was to ensure he enjoyed his cricket again. Tonight, he did exactly that.
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