BIRM­ING­HAM – Two late wick­ets rocked West In­dies and un­der­mined a coura­geous ef­fort with the ball, leav­ing them star­ing at a se­ries white­wash at Edg­bas­ton in Eng­land on Sat­ur­day.

Half-cen­turies from wick­et­keep­er Jamie Smith (95), for­mer cap­tain Joe Root (87), all-rounder Chris Woakes (62) and cur­rent skip­per Ben Stokes (54) threat­ened to put the game well be­hind West In­dies but fast bowlers Alzarri Joseph (4-122), Jay­den Seales (3-79) and Shamar Joseph (2-63) nev­er re­lent­ed and man­aged to lim­it Eng­land to 376.

Trail­ing by 94 runs on first in­nings, West In­dies then lost cap­tain Kraigg Brath­waite with­out scor­ing and left-han­der Kirk McKen­zie for eight, to limp to the close on 33 for two – still 61 runs adrift head­ing in­to Sun­day’s day three of the fi­nal Test.

“We start­ed pret­ty well with the ball and had them un­der a lit­tle bit of pres­sure,” said Seales, who reached 50 wick­ets in his 13th Test.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly a big part­ner­ship [was] built and you could see the ex­pe­ri­ence in their bat­ting line­up which took them out of that spot of both­er, so ku­dos to them.

“We showed great fight with the ball yes­ter­day and this morn­ing to start so it’s just a mat­ter of do­ing it a lit­tle more con­sis­tent­ly and back­ing it up all the time.”

Re­sum­ing the morn­ing on 38 for three, Eng­land were plunged in­to deep­er trou­ble in­side the first 20 min­utes when they lost Ol­lie Pope (10) and Har­ry Brook (2) cheap­ly, to find them­selves tot­ter­ing on 54 for five.

Pope, on six at the start, chopped on to Shamar Joseph and lost his mid­dle stump while Brook faced three de­liv­er­ies be­fore edg­ing a dri­ve be­hind off Seales, to de­part for two.

Root and Stokes ini­ti­at­ed the re­cov­ery, the pair post­ing 115 for the sixth wick­et in a part­ner­ship which car­ried Eng­land to lunch on 157 for no fur­ther loss.

Un­beat­en on 48 at the in­ter­val, Stokes com­plet­ed his 33rd Test fifty be­fore falling in the third over fol­low­ing the re­sump­tion, pulling Alzarri Joseph to Brath­waite at square leg af­ter fac­ing 69 balls in 1-¾ hours and count­ing five fours and a six.

Root, who struck sev­en fours in a knock last­ing 124 balls in just un­der 3-¼ hours, added a fur­ther 62 with Smith while pass­ing 12 000 runs in Tests, and looked set to com­plete his sec­ond hun­dred of the se­ries when he played down the wrong line to left-arm spin­ner Gu­dakesh Motie and was plumb lbw.

Smith and Woakes then com­bined in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry stand of the in­nings, adding 106 for the eighth wick­et to pro­pel the hosts to 274 for sev­en at tea.

Smith pro­duced an up tem­po in­nings, belt­ing a dozen fours and six off just 109 de­liv­er­ies while Woakes added to the tour­ing side’s pain with sev­en fours in a 78-ball knock.

The right-hand­ed Smith was march­ing to­wards his maid­en hun­dred when he missed a pull at one from Shamar Joseph which kept low and rat­tled his stumps and Alzarri Joseph picked up the two last wick­ets to leave West In­dies’ bats­men with a tricky pe­ri­od to nav­i­gate at the end.

And it proved a mine­field, Brath­waite bowled by a beau­ty from Woakes in the open­ing over and McKen­zie caught be­hind push­ing un­cer­tain­ly at seam­er Gus Atkin­son.

CMC

Scores:

WEST IN­DIES 282 (Kraigg Brath­waite 61, Ja­son Hold­er 59, Joshua Da Sil­va 49, Mikyle Louis 26; Gus Atkin­son 4-67, Chris Woakes 3-69, Mark Wood 2-52) and 33 for two.

ENG­LAND 376 (Jamie Smith 95, Joe Root 87, Chris Woakes 62, Ben Stokes 54; Alzarri Joseph 4-122, Jay­den Seales 3-79, Shamar Joseph 2-63)

CMC