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ScorecardA Rory Burns half-century couldn’t prevent Surrey’s latest defeat•Getty Images

Somerset beat Surrey by eight wickets with five balls to spare at The Kia Oval in a Royal London One Day Cup match but if felt more like a Twenty20 fixture after rain had reduced it to a 24-over affair.Surrey scored 163 for 6 and Somerset were set a recalculated 180 for victory. Jim Allenby, with 71 from 56 balls, and Johann Myburgh, who struck 76 from 59, put on 155, just four short of a record opening stand for Somerset in List A matches at this ground. Michael Burns, who shares the 1998 record with Dermot Reeve, was an umpire this time.Surrey were led for the first time by Rory Burns after regular captain Gareth Batty had pulled out of the match in the morning for family reasons. That allowed Dominic Sibley to make his first appearance of the season.Burns had chosen to bat and when Jason Roy and Steven Davies opened in bright sunshine it was a 50-over game.An out-of-sorts Davies, head back and pulling, was bowled by Allenby for 6 in the eighth over. But three overs later the players left the field to shelter from torrential rain which would prevent any further play for four hours and 20 minutes.When play resumed at 7pm Surrey, who were 53 for 1, with Roy unbeaten on 31, had 13 overs to face and reverted to T20 mode.Roy appeared to relish the increased tempo as he pulled and drove Peter Trego for fours as 11 came off the first over after the restart. But then Surrey lost two key players in the space of three deliveries.Roy had carved one more boundary to third man when he was bowled by a slower delivery from Tim Groenewald for a 43-ball 46, with five fours. Then, from the second ball of the 14th, Sangakkara, on 12, was run out when a straight drive by Burns was directed onto the stumps by the bowler Roelof van der Merwe.After that Burns led by example. He hoisted Max Waller over long-on for six, but lost Gary Wilson, who was well caught low down by Adam Hose in the covers, to make it 106 for 4 in the 19th over.Tom Curran was run out first ball and Zafar Ansari fell cheaply. The innings was being held together by Burns, who swiped van der Merwe over midwicket for his second six.Surrey were 147 for 6 at the start of the last over and Somerset were relieved that Burns had lost the strike. But tail-ender Mathew Pillans struck the first two deliveries from Trego over square-leg and midwicket for sixes as 16 came off the final six deliveries.But it would not be enough as Myburgh and Allenby, who each hit three sixes, put the result beyond doubt.

Birmingham have signed Australia wicketkeeper batsman Matthew Wade for the final six group games of their NatWest T20 Blast campaign. Wade replaces New Zealand’s Luke Ronchi who was called-up for the tour of Zimbabwe and South Africa.A good enough batsman to have made two Test centuries, Wade is an experienced T20 player having enjoyed a stint in the IPL as well as the Big Bash. He is currently in the Australia team engaged in the tri-series ODI tournament in the Caribbean. He has played 12 Tests, 65 ODIs and 25 T20Is. He will make his Birmingham debut at Yorkshire on July 8.”Matthew is an ideal replacement for Luke and a great addition to the squad who will provide power to the middle-order as well as being a top-class gloveman,” Dougie Brown, the director of cricket at Warwickshire, said.”He has experience of playing the biggest competitions around the world and joins us at a key time as we look to secure our third successive qualification for the NatWest T20 Blast quarter finals.”Birmingham are currently fourth in the North Group of the NatWest Blast table, with two wins, a loss and a no-result in their first four games.Warwickshire have also announced the release of two young batmen, Freddie Coleman and Jonathon Webb. Both 24-year-olds will remain on the staff until the end of the season, but be given every opportunity to find another county or alternative work if appropriate.Coleman, who has played 17 international games for Scotland, represented Warwickshire only once in first-class cricket. Replacing Jonathan Trott at the end of the 2015 season, he suffered a pair against Somerset. Webb played 11 games in the Birmingham side that won the NatWest Blast competition in 2014. He also suffered a pair against Durham in his final first-class game for the club.

England captain Ben Stokes told his players “pain is just an emotion”, as they toiled through 143 overs in India’s second innings at Old Trafford. But he has hinted that England would freshen up their bowling attack for the fifth and final Test at The Oval.Stokes bowled 11 overs – including eight in a row – on Sunday, but grimaced throughout and repeatedly clutched his right shoulder. He revealed after the teams shook hands on a draw that he had a sore biceps tendon. He said he had “been better” physically, but considered it “very unlikely” that he would not be fit enough to play in the fifth Test on Thursday.After taking his first five-wicket haul in eight years in India’s first innings, Stokes retired hurt while batting on Friday but re-emerged that evening and went on to score his first Test hundred in two years the following day. He did not bowl at all on Saturday, but after his spells on Sunday has bowled 140 in this series, a personal record.Related

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“It’s been a pretty big workload so far in the series,” he said. “I had a big week last week at Lord’s, with time spent out in the middle with bat in hand and obviously overs bowled, and then same again this week. I said it a few times to the guys out there: ‘pain is just an emotion.’ It’s just one of those things.”It is actually my bicep tendon. It obviously had quite a lot of workload through it, just been creeping around. But yeah, [I spent] a lot of time out in the middle doing my job as an allrounder this week and [it] just got a little bit flared up… It didn’t get any worse throughout the day, just stayed the same, so that’s why I kept on going.”England do not play another Test after this series until the Ashes in November, and Stokes has not played a white-ball international for nearly two years. He therefore expects to play at The Oval: “Hopefully, it settles down and we’ll be good as gold for the last game… I don’t want to eat my words, but the likelihood that I won’t play is very unlikely.”4:53

Stokes: ‘Too many loopholes’ in injury replacements idea

However, Stokes implied that England would need “fresh legs” for the fifth Test after nearly 900 overs in the field across the first four. Brydon Carse and Chris Woakes have played all four Tests, while Jofra Archer has played two in a row after a four-year absence from Test cricket. Gus Atkinson, Sam Cook, Jamie Overton and Josh Tongue are the other available options.”If you look at how long we’ve been out in the field and the overs that we bowled as a bowling unit, everyone is going to be pretty sore and pretty tired going into the last game of the series,” he said. “There’ll be an assessment of everyone, and hopefully we can use these next two or three days’ rest period wisely and then have to make a decision.”These recovery days are going to be pretty important and we might have to make a few decisions to get some fresh legs in. But that won’t be decided until we get closer to the last game.Chris Woakes has played all four Tests so far in the series•Getty Images

“We generally like to get our team out a couple of days before but we might have to just take a little bit longer going into this last game, because we want to give everyone as long as we possibly can to be able to recover.”Stokes was named Player of the Match for the second Test in a row after his all-round efforts at Lord’s. He has now won 12 of those in his Test career, the joint-second-most (with Ian Botham) for England, behind Joe Root (13), but told the BBC’s that it meant very little to him after the game petered out into a draw.”When you put in good performances for the team, your enjoyment of those is dictated by how you feel at the end of the Test match with the result,” he said. “I would obviously give the bottle of champagne and the medal back in a heartbeat if we ended up being on the right side of the result that we wanted.”He also refused to criticise the Old Trafford pitch, despite only 24 wickets falling across five days – including only two in the final five sessions. “I think ‘unacceptable’ is probably a bit too much,” he said. “It was a lot easier for the left-handers throughout this Test match… It certainly seemed a little more dead bowling to left-handers than it did to right-handers.”

Smriti Mandhana’s knowing smile said it before her words did. India’s return to Lord’s for the first time since Deepti Sharma ran out Charlie Dean backing up to sweep their ODI series here nearly three years ago would always pose the question and Mandhana knew it was coming.”Doesn’t happen, right? You come to Lord’s and that question is not asked?” Mandhana said. “We didn’t really think anything about all of that incident. Only today, there was one random appeal for Tammy Beaumont, when that happened. And again, Deepti was bowling.”That’s when we cracked a joke that Lord’s and Deepti has an, I don’t know how I term it in words, but we had a small joke around it.”The whole match last time, of course it was overshadowed quite a lot because of that one incident. But I would say the way we all actually played cricket in terms of that whole series, I mean, one incident cannot overshadow it, and the chat was only about how good we played and we have to just keep continuing that.”But if the venue, teams and individuals reconvening for the second of three ODIs in this series – which England won this time against the backdrop of two significant rain interruptions to draw level 1-1 – didn’t already promise some drama, a number of on-field incidents delivered.The first, which Mandhana referenced, came when India appealed for Beaumont to be dismissed obstructing the field.Beaumont had set England’s initial pursuit of 144 in 29 overs off to a flyer on 25 off 17 balls with England 36 without loss in the fifth over. She clipped a Deepti delivery towards midwicket and set off for a run but turned back as Jemimah Rodrigues pounced and fired the ball back to the striker’s end.Beaumont’s left foot was grounded inside her crease as she brought her right leg forward and the ball ricocheted off her pad as wicketkeeper Richa Ghosh threw her arms up in appeal. After an umpire review, Beaumont was adjudged not out.”I was not in a really good angle, to be fair, probably it was not visible at all,” Mandhana said. “Jemi definitely felt that maybe she kicked it or something. They referred it and it was not out, so I’m sure that they should have seen all the angles. That’s the only view I have on it.”But I was in no angle, to be fair, to see what happened. At mid-on you don’t see what exactly happened from that way. So not being diplomatic, but genuinely I did not see it.”Amy Jones, who top-scored for England with an unbeaten 46, was at the other end when it happened and spent a nervous few moments “talking it through” with Beaumont as they awaited the result of the review.”It was weird,” Jones said. “I’ve never been out there for one of those before, I don’t think. The umpires were happy that Tammy was in her crease, so she wasn’t trying to not get run out, but obviously they appealed for obstructing the field.”I learned that even if you’re in, you can still be out, but obviously Tammy had no intent of actually obstructing them. I think she was just trying to get back into her crease, so all okay in the end. She didn’t know if it could result in a wicket or not.”In Deepti’s next over, she pulled out of her delivery stride and Beaumont, who wasn’t backing up excessively, made it back into her crease safely at the non-striker’s end. Mandhana shrugged that off after the match, saying Deepti “actually pulls out quite a lot”.”I would say that every match she would’ve played maybe once or twice she has the habit,” Mandhana added. “Maybe she wants to watch the batter or she has her own strategy. But it was not discussed at all.”Why would we discuss all of those things? We came here to play good cricket and that was the only discussion which we had. She does that quite a lot. I think it’s more to do with seeing what the batter is doing.”Beaumont ultimately fell lbw to Sneh Rana for 34 off 35 balls after staging a 54-run opening stand with Jones.The match was reduced further by a heavy evening downpour with England 102 for 1 from 18.4 overs, eight balls shy of the 20 overs needed to constitute a match.Nat Sciver-Brunt, who had put on 48 runs with Jones, was bowled by Kranti Goud on the second ball after the resumption with a revised target of 115 off 24 overs.With England needing 13 more runs off the last five overs, India reviewed for caught behind off new batter Sophia Dunkley, despite the stump mic picking up Ghosh saying there was no bat involved, which was proved on the replays.Again, Jones found herself in conversation with her batting partner about keeping calm in the moment.”I thought they played that very well,” she said. “We tried not to get drawn into it. It was always going to happen. It’s part of the game. So we did acknowledge it when Dunks came out. I was like, ‘it’s a bit annoying out here’.”It’s what most teams would do. So I tried to leave that to the umpires. It is a part of the game.”With the series level, the final ODI in Durham on Tuesday has plenty at stake, lots of recent history behind it and promises to be entertaining.

Roston Chase, West Indies’ new Test captain, believes that he can bring the best out of his players with his “calm style”. Chase, 33, last played a Test match in March 2023 and had previously led West Indies in two white-ball internationals but despite the lack of recent game-time in red-ball cricket and limited captaincy experience, he was picked as the Test captain. Chase’s first assignment as Test captain is a three-match series against Australia at home, which begins in Bridgetown on June 25.”I’ve never captained a senior team in terms of the West Indies team or Barbados team [in Tests]. But I’ve captained eight teams in the West Indies before,” Chase said during an interaction facilitated by , the official broadcaster for West Indies in India. “I think I’m a good leader. Obviously, I’m not perfect. I’m still learning.””I did most of my captaining in my early days like school level and local divisions. I think I have a calm style [as captain]. I really know how to bring out the best in the players that I have.”Related

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Chase will work with Daren Sammy, who has taken charge as West Indies all-format coach from April this year.”The captaincy conversations that I had would have been with the coach, Daren Sammy, and Miles Bascombe from the board,” Chase said. “I’ve been out for two years, but after Sammy approached me about coming back because I always wanted to come back and play Test cricket.”I was exploring the white ball and the franchise cricket for a bit. And he asked me about coming back and I thought about it and I ended up making the decision to come back.”Chase said he was “very excited” to take up the new role and that he was not ready to play Test cricket last year.”I was very excited to get the captaincy. I mean, it is a very prestigious job,” he said. “One that many greats before me have done. So, it was a very proud moment for me when I got the news.”I was asked in 2024 about coming back. But at that time, I was still finding my feet and trying to get into the franchise leagues. So, I wasn’t quite ready and had the time or the availability to come back into the Test arena. But after I had the conversation with Sammy and Bascombe, I decided that this was the right time for me to come back.”Chase, who has scored 2265 runs in 49 Tests with five hundreds, said that West Indies are ready for the Australia challenge. “I wouldn’t call it [playing Australia] pressure,” he said. “They’re obviously the No.1 team in the world. We’re just looking to go there and play our best cricket, execute the plans that we spoke about in our team meetings and the data that has been presented to us.”So, we’re just looking to go there and give a full 100 [percent] effort and play some hard cricket.”

Mustafizur Rahman has been “granted” a no-objection certificate to link up with Delhi Capitals (DC) for “the period from 18-24 May 2025,” the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) said in a statement on Friday afternoon.That makes him available – in Mitchell Starc’s absence – for DC’s three remaining league-phase games in IPL 2025, but not the playoffs, should DC make it to that stage. The BCB confirmed that Mustafizur would be available for Bangladesh’s first T20I against UAE in Sharjah on Saturday before travelling to India. Whether he is ready for action after reaching India on May 18 for DC’s game the same evening, however, remains to be seen.The arrangement between DC and Mustafizur had run into a bit of a snag earlier in the week, with the IPL and the franchise issuing a statement confirming his acquisition but the BCB then stating that it hadn’t been approached for a no-objection certificate yet.Related

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On Friday morning, Starc confirmed that he wouldn’t be travelling to India for the remainder of IPL 2025, a week after being part of the match that was abandoned in Dharamsala – and will be replayed. Donovan Ferreira, who played one game this season, would also not be returning.The update means that Starc will have a clear runway into the World Test Championship (WTC) final, avoiding the possibility of playing T20s in India a week before the match. Starc is DC’s highest wicket-taker so far in the season with 14 wickets in 11 matches at 26.14.Faf du Plessis and Tristan Stubbs have confirmed their return, but Stubbs will be available only for the rest of the league phase, after which he would be leaving for the WTC final.

Heather Knight, England’s captain, says that the challenge of leading her team into the Women’s T20 World Cup has her full focus, and insists that “the line has already been drawn” on the disciplinary measures taken against her for a historic “blackface” photograph that appeared on social media recently.Knight, 33, was last week reprimanded and given a suspended £1000 fine by the Cricket Discipline Commission, after a compromising fancy-dress photograph surfaced on Facebook, dating back to a party in 2012, when she was 21. While it was accepted by the Cricket Regulator that there was “no racist intent in her conduct”, Knight said in a statement that she was “truly sorry” and had “long regretted it”.Now, speaking on the eve of England’s T20 World Cup opener, against Bangladesh in Sharjah on Saturday, Knight turned the focus squarely to the task at hand for her team, as they seek to improve on their semi-final finish at the last event in South Africa two years ago, and land their first ICC global title since 2017.Related

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“It was obviously something that has been ongoing the last couple of months and it is something, as far as I am concerned, that has been addressed, and something that was a long time ago, so it hasn’t been in my mind at all,” Knight said.”The line has already been drawn, in my opinion, so I am really excited, obviously, for what is to come. We have got super supportive group, there is no doubt about that, so yeah, I’m pretty happy to get cracking with the cricket.”England came through an unbeaten home summer, winning 13 out of 14 matches against New Zealand and Pakistan, with only a washout at Taunton denying them a clean sweep. In addition to Bangladesh, they will play against Scotland, West Indies and South Africa in the World Cup group stage, with their two likeliest rivals for the title, Australia and India, awaiting them in the other half of the draw.”Australia are going to be favourites, for sure,” Knight said of the defending champions, who have won six of the last seven stagings of the T20 World Cup, dating back to 2010. “Obviously, their success in this event has been huge, but we feel in a really good place. We’ve been playing some brilliant cricket, and while the first goal is to get out of the group stages, we’re pretty confident in what we bring. We believe we can beat anyone on our best day.”Much of England’s summer was spent honing a side that could compete in spinning conditions, with Bangladesh having been the World Cup’s original host country. The event has since moved to the UAE for security reasons, but Knight is confident that England’s spin contingent – led by the ICC’s No.1-ranked bowler in white-ball cricket, Sophie Ecclestone – will thrive at a tournament that, to judge by the tournament’s opening fixtures, already appears to favour slow bowling.”We feel very prepared for what we’ve got to come, and now it’s just about executing it and being really smart about how we do things in-game,” Knight said. “We’ve obviously got the quality spin attack. It’s been our big strength, particularly through those middle overs, how we really squeeze teams and try and rush them in that middle period.”England opted to overlook the extra pace of Lauren Filer for this tournament, instead relying on Lauren Bell as a sole specialist seamer, backed up by a trio of seam-bowling allrounders in Nat Sciver-Brunt, Freya Kemp and Dani Gibson. Charlie Dean and Sarah Glenn also offer batting depth as spinning allrounders, meaning that England – on paper, at least – have an enviably versatile squad.”We’ve got really good options, which is the nice thing,” Knight said. “The depth that we’ve got allows us to play based on the conditions that we face, and the team that we’re playing against.”It’s not going to be easy picking the team, but we’re pretty set on the little tweaks that we might need to make to get the most out of the conditions and teams that we’re playing against.”There are going to be times where we are going to have to graft a little bit, the boundaries are big and there might be times when we get on slow wickets where we are going to have to adapt to what is in front of us and be really smart with how we go about things.”Both Kemp and Sciver-Brunt were managed back to bowling fitness during the summer, after coming through back and knee issues respectively. But Knight was adamant that each was in the right place to deliver a full all-round role for the cause.”The allrounders are the fittest in the team, because of the role they have to do,” she said. “Freya, in particular, she’s super impressive with how she’s come back from that [second] stress fracture, and the work that she’s put in to be in a place to perform, it’s been brilliant.”

Riley Meredith ran through Middlesex’s batting line-up for the second time this season at Lord’s, as Somerset won by eight wickets to book their place in the knockout stages of the Metro Bank One-Day Cup.Meredith took 4 for 12 in Somerset’s T20 Blast win at Lord’s back in June and was Middlesex’s chief tormentor again with 4 for 27, as the hosts were bundled out for 135 with 63 balls unused. It was only the second time he had taken four or more wickets in List A cricket.He received great support from new-ball partner Josh Davey(1 for 20), the pair leaving Middlesex in disarray at 39 for 4 by the end of the powerplay. England spinner Jack Leach got two wickets later down the card with only Martin Andersson (34) and Luke Hollman, left stranded on 38 not out, providing prolonged resistance.James Rew (53 not out) and Lewis Goldsworthy (41 not out) shared an unbroken third-wicket stand of 81 to make light work of the chase as Somerset romped home with 23 overs to spare, eliminating Middlesex in the process.Somerset’s sixth win in eight group games should be enough for them to progress directly to the semi-finals, but their fate will depend on other results in the coming days.James Rew took Somerset across the line•Getty Images

Middlesex had won three of their previous four games but were soon in trouble after being put in. Meredith took only four balls to begin the rout, pinning youngster Nathan Fernandes in front for a single.Joe Cracknell had improved his career-best in both the last two games, but was run out after setting off for a single to short mid-on, and colliding with bowler Davey prior to George Thomas’ direct hit.That wound was self-inflicted, but Meredith was soon centre-stage once more, cutting short Mark Stoneman’s four-boundary cameo with a snorter of a ball which zipped between bat and pad and plucked out the off stump.Davey completed the powerplay carnage by castling Sam Robson off the inside edge and even when the new-ball pair vacated the bowling crease there was no let-up, Ben Green causing Jack Davies to feather one through to Rew.Middlesex were in danger of not beating the 78 they’d been hustled out for by Somerset in the Blast two months previously and needed some crisp driving from Andersson to surpass that figure, he and Hollman sharing a sixth-wicket stand of 46.But Meredith snuffed out lingering hopes of revival when he switched to the Pavilion End to trap Anderson leg-before with the first ball off his second spell immediately after the drinks break.Hollman clubbed from Leach into the Mound Stand for the only six of the innings but others fell around him, Sean Dickson’s stunning catch to remove Henry Brookes the highlight of a fine fielding display from the visitors.Thomas was fortunate not to be adjudged run-out on seven as Somerset began the chase, though he didn’t make the most of the reprieve when brilliantly stumped by Davies off Ethan Bamber four runs later. Davies would also stump Somerset’s leading scorer in the competition, Andrew Umeed, for 22.But Goldsworthy remained to anchor his side inexorably towards the target in company with Rew, who cut loose late on to raise his fifty from 40 balls in the grand manner with a towering six off Hollman.

Trent Rockets were victorious in a nervy must-win encounter against Birmingham Phoenix in the Hundred at Edgbaston on Monday. The Rockets drew level on points with third-placed Northern Superchargers to keep themselves in the hunt for a place in the knock-outs, as they came out on top by three wickets with just three balls to go in a tense affair.Birmingham Phoenix won the toss and chose to bat, with both sides sitting on six points in the table and looking for the opportunity to keep their seasons alive. Phoenix had to make do without Sophie Devine, forced to miss out through injury.That required a batting order shuffle for Phoenix but their shuffled top order didn’t last long: three wickets fell early for the home side as they lost captain Ellyse Perry, Fran Wilson and Amy Jones in the opening 15 balls before they had reached double digits. Alexa Stonehouse grabbed the big wicket of Perry, Sciver-Brunt dismissed her one-time housemate Wilson and her maid-of-honour Jones first-ball.ESPNcricinfo Ltd

“I was very happy with how the ball came out today,” Sciver-Brunt said. “I probably haven’t had that much success or that much consistency, so I was very happy with my personal bowling performance today.”Phoenix’s recovery was as impressive as it was crucial, with Sterre Kalis and Indian international Richa Ghosh putting on 95 for a record fourth-wicket partnership in the women’s Hundred. Ghosh made 41 from 36 and Kalis 47 from 44 as they took the hosts to 112 for 6.After her early wickets Sciver-Brunt finished with figures of 2 for 16. Australian international spinner Ashleigh Gardner also picked up a critical late couple of wickets to take 2 for 17.Nat Sciver-Brunt and Ashleigh Gardner took two wickets each•Gareth Copley/Getty Images

Phoenix needed early wickets to help them defend their below-par total and they managed just that, with Bryony Smith and Nat Wraith dismissed in the first 20 balls. Unfortunately for Phoenix, that brought Sciver-Brunt to the crease, the leading run-scorer in The Hundred this year – and indeed the record-holder for the highest aggregate ever in the women’s competition.With Sciver-Brunt and Gardner at the crease the visitors looked to be cantering in the chase, but a flurry of wickets at an inopportune moment from balls 70-80 – including a timely run-out from Perry – made things suddenly appear much tricker for the Rockets. Not for the first time, the Rockets found themselves trying to scrap over the finish line, but this time it was a must-win encounter.They benefitted from a debatable no-ball call, which saw Josie Groves reprieved having initially been given out caught, but on this occasion they had enough in the locker to get over the line – Katie George there at the end alongside Groves to keep alive Rockets’ hopes of going further in the Hundred.”In terms of the chase, we probably got ahead of it a bit earlier and gave ourselves a bit of relief towards the end, so the pressure didn’t build up too much,” Sciver-Brunt said. “For the two batters to come out at the end, who hadn’t faced many balls, they were very brave, and I was really pleased for them to get the job done.”We’ve had so many close games, so to come out on the right side of it this time feels really good. It’s still all in our hands, if we beat the Oval Invincibles in our last game then we will be in that top three.”

In AC/DC’s iconic hit , chants of “Thunder” burst through the opening thrum, building the excitement before that unmistakeable high-pitched lead vocal kicks in.On the most picture-perfect day for cricket at Trent Bridge, Mark Wood interrupted the gentle murmur of the first nine overs, in which West Indies openers Kraigg Brathwaite and Mikyle Louis had eased their side to 32 for nought, with a barrage of fire that had the batters rocking and the packed stands audibly in awe.Four overs in which his speed never dipped below 92mph went unrewarded – as did Wood all day – but what a curtain-raiser it was to the main performance of the day, Kavem Hodge’s maiden international century. Had Hodge screamed “I was caught… In the middle of a railroad track” as he punched a Ben Stokes inswinger for four through long-off to bring up his ton, it wouldn’t have sounded out of place, such was the tone as he screeched in sheer joy.By the end of the day he had fallen for 120, lbw to Chris Woakes in a decision upheld on umpire’s call during the evening session.By the end of the day, England and their supporters were willing Wood to take a wicket, just one, feeling he deserved it for all his gut-busting effort through his first 14 overs. Instead, he left the field one ball into his 15th, seemingly as a precaution after feeling his hamstring, some 35 minutes before the close.Hodge formed half of a hugely exciting partnership alongside Alick Athanaze, worth 175 for the fourth wicket, with Athanaze falling for 82, also in the evening session, but not before playing his part in driving West Indies to within 65 runs of England’s first-innings 416. Between them, they have only played 10 Tests, but they played defiantly to put their side in a much better place after an innings defeat in the first Test at Lord’s.Hodge should have been gone for 16 – to Wood, no less – but Joe Root put down the catch at slip. He and Athanaze both went to tea with half-centuries to their name, having added 123 runs while England went wicketless in the middle session.Athanaze’s ears would have been ringing when, on 48, he was struck flush on the helmet, right next to the badge, by a Wood short ball at 91mph. Hodge’s reaction at the other end was a mirror image of his batting partner’s as he reeled back in shock. Wood was first to ask, “are you ok?” and England’s fielders also approached to check on him before the medics arrived to conduct official tests. But he was passed fit to continue and reached his maiden Test fifty just two balls later, with a nudge off the hip for two in Gus Atkinson’s next over.Athanaze went on to unfurl some lovely cover drives, and his slog-sweep for six over midwicket off Shoaib Bashir in the penultimate over before tea was glorious. Ben Stokes, however, prised him out with a century looming in the evening session, as he chased a wider delivery on 82 and sliced to Harry Brook at gully.Mark Wood blew up the speed-gun in his 14.1 overs but went unrewarded•Gareth Copley/Getty Images

Although the rest of his evening’s stay would prove to be a bit of an ordeal, Jason Holder got his runs flowing immediately, guiding his first ball for four through the slips cordon and, two balls later, clearing cover where the diminutive figure of Ben Duckett leapt somewhat belatedly and in vain as the ball sailed over his reaching hands and to the boundary.Wood returned to the attack and beat Hodge’s outside edge with a fantastic outswinging yorker on 92, before giving in to a wry grin when the last ball of the same over swung away again for another near-miss. Hodge forged on, past his century – reached with that punchy drive off Stokes – and put on 46 runs with Holder before he departed.Stokes took the second new ball with just one over left in the day. He handed it to Atkinson, who conceded five, Joshua Da Silva pulling four through midwicket to finish the day not out 32 with Holder on 23.Brathwaite and Louis weathered Wood’s earlier onslaught and after the first hour, West Indies were 48 without loss.But wickets to Bashir and Atkinson had them 89 for 3 at lunch with the innings of Athanaze and Hodge in their infancy.Wood came on in the 10th over and managed to produce some swing, which had been non-existent to that point on Friday. But it was his unbridled pace that had everyone transfixed as he twice nudged the 96mph mark and hit 95 twice more in the over.Wood’s second over was equally rapid, clocked at 94mph five times and 95 once, with testing lines as he twice beat Brathwaite’s outside edge.The Trent Bridge crowd gasped in unison as the scoreboard flashed up the speed of Wood’s fifth delivery in his third over – a staggering 97.1mph. That was understandably a maiden and after three overs, his figures read 3-1-5-0.Brathwaite managed to find the boundary, guiding the ball fine off his ribs, in Wood’s fourth over, which still contained some lightning speed.It was Bashir who made the breakthrough in the 15th over, shortly after the drinks break, as Brook took a nerveless catch running a long way to his right from mid-on to remove Louis for 21. It was Bashir’s first Test wicket from two matches at home after not bowling in the first game of this series.Related

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Bashir could have had his second in his next over when he rapped Kirk McKenzie – on nought at the time – on the pad and appealed but the umpire was unmoved, as were England who didn’t seem interested in deferring to the DRS, although replays later showed the ball would have hit the top of leg stump.Atkinson returned for his second spell to replace Wood and he soon removed Brathwaite for 48 trying to turn a short, straight delivery down the leg side but looping it off the shoulder of the bat straight to Ollie Pope at short leg.Bashir did take his second wicket shortly before lunch, McKenzie serving up a simple catch to Stokes at mid-on.But, hours later, you couldn’t help feeling that it was England who trudged off just a little bit Thunderstruck.