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England finished Day 1 of the second test at Trent Bridge with a sense of ascendancy as they ended up with a score of 416 in pretty favorable batting conditions. Ollie Pope was the pick of the English batsmen with a fluent 121 while Ben Duckett and skipper Ben Stokes chipped in with contrasting half-centuries of their own.
On a bright and sunny day in Nottingham, West Indies skipper Kraigg Brathwaite surprised everyone by putting the hosts into bat after winning the toss. It started well for the visitors who dismissed Zak Crawley cheaply in the first over, but that was as good as it got for them in the first hour of play as Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope unleashed a flurry of boundaries as England became the fastest team to get to 50 in Test Cricket history, a feat they achieved in just the 5th over of their innings.
With everything going against them up until that point, it took the introduction of spinner Kevin Sinclair and pacer Shamar Joseph on either end for the Windies to wrest back some semblance of control over proceedings. Both of them bowled tight lines in and around the off-stump, and that pressure eventually bought them a wicket, with Ben Duckett playing a shot too many to a ball just on the line of the 4th stump, edging it to Holder at second slip off Josephs’s bowling.
Pope continued to build his innings with patience and grit, with a pretty substantial amount of good fortune as well. While there were various instances in the day that saw the West Indies exert a lot of pressure on England, the fielding effort was anything but effective. Pope was the beneficiary on two occasions- Athanaze dropped him at gully while he was on 46 and then Holder fluffed a chance at second slip while he was on 54.
Shortly after lunch, Joe Root was knocked down by a fluffed pull that went straight to mid-on, and Brook had arrived at 142 for 3. Alzarri Joseph juggled the ball twice before seizing it for good, and Seales’s heart was in his mouth.
Before being dropped on 24 at gully, Harry Brook punished some careless line and length from Alzarri Joseph with three straight fours.
After Pope and Brook combined for ten more fours in the first hour of the afternoon session, Brook reached 30 with an easy six off Alzarri Joseph’s deep point. Just when Brook was looking to take the day away from the visitors, he lost his wicket to Sinclair in a cheeky attempt to play the paddle- he got a toe-poke which Mcknezie gleefully accepted.
Pope proceeded to score 121 off 167 balls, his second century of the year and sixth overall after hitting 196 against India in January. Before Stokes hit deep midwicket with the 14th delivery from Kavem Hodge, England was 342 for 6. After joining the attack in the 68th over, left-arm spinner Hodge finished with 2 for 44 off 10 overs had a hand in two more wickets, catching Gus Atkinson and Pope in the slips.
After falling for 28 runs in 7.2 overs to Jamie Smith, Stokes, and Atkinson, the hosts were all out for 416 at the end, with some of the sparkle from their innings being sapped by cheap dismissals.