Dowrich keeps Windies on top despite Stokes’ four wickets

Dowrich made 61 after opener Kraigg Brathwaite had top-scored with 65 in a total of 318 all out.

Stand-in captain Ben Stokes led England’s attack with 4-49 to follow his top score of 43 in the hosts’ 204.

But that left West Indies 114 runs ahead on first innings in a match that marks international cricket’s return from lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

And they were still 99 runs in front after openers Rory Burns and Dom Sibley survived a tricky 10 overs to take England to 15-0 in their second innings at stumps.

“England bowled well and it was really challenging throughout the day, always aggressive,” Brathwaite told reporters. “So I think Dowrich and I did a good job for the team.”

Stokes’ haul included the wicket of West Indies captain Jason Holder for just five, with the England talisman having fallen to his rival all-rounder during the towering seamer’s Test-best 6-42 on Thursday.

But wicketkeeper Dowrich held firm with a fine fifty until a 115-ball innings featuring eight boundaries ended when he was caught down the legside by opposing gloveman Jos Buttler off Stokes.

It was not the first time Dowrich had proved a thorn in England’s side.

Last year he made 116 and shared a huge stand of 295 with Holder when his fellow Barbadian made an unbeaten 202 during the West Indies’ 381-run win over England in the first Test at their Kensington Oval home ground.

That victory helped West Indies regain the Wisden Trophy but it is 32 years since they last won a Test series in England.

– Archer and Wood struggle –

England dropped veteran paceman Stuart Broad for this current match to play express quicks Jofra Archer and Mark Wood together for the first time in a Test.

But Archer and Wood struggled to make an impression on a placid pitch.

They took just one wicket between them in a combined 44 overs — and that was only when Wood bowled last man Shannon Gabriel.

James Anderson, already England’s all-time leading Test wicket-taker with Broad in second place, took 3-62.

“I think the West Indies have had the best of the first few days certainly, we are up against it, Anderson told reporters.

But he sympathised with Archer, who bowled Shai Hope off a no-ball, and Wood.

“I thought they bowled really well… You have days like this in Test cricket when things don’t quite go your way,” said Anderson.

“Jofra, getting a wicket off a no-ball, if he gets that, his confidence goes up and he could get on a roll then. Similarly with Woody, I felt he bowled well in periods and on another day he could have had more wickets.”

West Indies resumed behind closed doors on 57-1, with the first sunny blue skies of the match providing ideal conditions for batting.

Hope, reprieved by Archer’s no-ball, was still on 16 when he edged off-spinner Dom Bess to first slip where Stokes, captaining England in the absence of Joe Root, held a sharp catch.

Stokes then made a breakthrough when he trapped Brathwaite in front of the stumps.

Roston Chase drove the first delivery with the new ball, from Wood, for four before he was lbw to Anderson for a defiant 47 off 142 balls.

Following his bowling heroics on Thursday, Holder said he wanted to score a Test hundred in England as well.

But he fell in single figures when, undone by a surprise bouncer, he hooked Stokes to Archer at long leg.