James Anderson‘s presence will always been felt but then the stalwart James Anderson will be donning the new role of mentor to upcoming England speedster. England (ENG) will take on West Indies (WI) in the second Test of the series, at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, on July 22. Notably, the hosts will be without the service of James Anderson as the star pacer retired from international cricket with the culmination of the first Test at Lord’s.
It’s the start of a new era up at Trent Bridge although, at a glance, it looks a lot like the old era. There’s a solitary change to England’s winning line-up from Lord’s, albeit a significant one, as James Anderson takes his leave of the team after 188 appearances and 21 years. But if you thought the future starts here and now, then the recent past wants to have a word with you.
ENG vs WI Previous Performances
Regarding the Test, England put up a dominant performance to win the game with an innings and 114 runs. Gus Atkinson dazzled with the ball for England.
Atkinson picked seven wickets and followed it up with a five-wicket haul in the second innings. With his contribution, the hosts now lead the three-match series by 1-0. Another positive outcome for England was the intent shown by the debutant, Jamie Smith, as the batter smashed 70 runs. On the other hand, the West Indies batter looked uncomfortable against the swinging ball and had no answer to questions posed by Atkinson. Gudakesh Motie’s was the top score with 31 runs, showing the lack of contribution from the batters.
With James Anderson turning mentor for the rest of the games in the Test series, England have called up Mark Wood for the second Test. The fact that five batters from England notched up half-centuries shows how dominant England have been in batting.
ENG vs WI Head to Head
Matches | 164 |
Won by England | 52 |
Won by West Indies | 59 |
Draw | 53 |
No Result | 00 |
First-ever Fixture |
June 23, 1928
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Most-recent Fixture |
July 12, 2024
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ENG vs WI Pitch Report
The pitch of Trent Bridge Cricket Ground is considered to be a fast pitch according to the England environment. The batters gets good help in the initial phase of the match. During this time, the fast bowler also gets help. The batters find it easy to play their shots due to good bounce and zip off the pitch. As the match progresses, the pitch at Trent Bridge Cricket Ground becomes a little slow.
Pleasant sunny conditions for the first two days of the Test are expected to give way to a slightly more drizzly weekend, although nothing apocalyptic seems to be on the horizon. With 24 hours to go, the pitch appeared to still have a tinge of live grass on the surface, although there’s time yet for a final shave.
The last time England played here was when the idea of the ‘Bazball’ style of play was beginning to take shape. It was at this venue where the hosts pulled off a chase of 299 against New Zealand, riding on Jonny Bairstow’s exceptional batting in the final innings. It was a high-scoring game with both teams crossing 500 in the first innings and the ground has been good for the batters in recent times as well, going by the County matches played here. On the weather front, rain is forecast for the third day.
ENG vs WI Big Picture England looks at new crop of speedsters post James Anderson
It’s the start of a new era up at Trent Bridge although, at a glance, it looks a lot like the old era. There’s a solitary change to England’s winning line-up from Lord’s, albeit a significant one, as James Anderson takes his leave of the team after 188 appearances and 21 years. But if you thought the future starts here and now, then the recent past wants to have a word with you.
Mark Wood and Chris Woakes, with their venerable combined age of 69, were England’s winning formula in the latter half of last summer’s epic Ashes, particularly when they combined in the crucial third Test at Headingly; raw pace on the one hand, incisive swing and nibble on the other, not to mention their cool-headed marshalling of a fraught run-chase on the fourth afternoon.
Here they are once more, then, back as the continuity candidates in an England bowling attack that will be lacking both James Anderson and Stuart Broad in a home Test for the first time since West Indies at Edgbaston in 2012. Ironically both players were subbed out of that 2012 game with an eye to the future too, as the selectors took the chance to assess the attack-leading potential of Steven Finn, Tim Bresnan and Graham Onions, all three of whom went on to retire before either of the main protagonists.
No such leaps of faith are being made this time around. While Matthew Potts and the uncapped Dillon Pennington wait patiently in the wings, England are falling back in the first instance on one of the core tenets of the Stokes-McCullum era: continuity of selection and faith in your chosen campaigners.
Wood may have endured a tricky time across all three formats this winter, including four wickets in three Tests in India, but England need no reminding of his visceral power when the conditions are in his favour; nor of Woakes’ prowess on home soil, as last summer’s Compton-Miller Medal amply attests.
Wood had not been an original inclusion in the squad, after his involvement in the T20 World Cup. However, his recall is arguably informed by Gus Atkinson’s startling performance at Lord’s.
Debut figures of 12 for 106 were hugely impressive in their own right, but the discipline in Atkinson’s performance was an additional factor, as he charged through the crease to hammer out a relentless line and length, pushing 90mph in every spell while offering no let-up to a becalmed West Indian batting line-up. With Wood at the other end, scattering a few pigeons with his extra mph, England’s stated aim of prepping for the next Ashes tour could well get a kick-start in the coming days.
For West Indies, there’s no easy route back into contention, though that has often been the case on recent England tours. Kraigg Brathwaite and Jason Holder will remember the circumstances of their fightback on the 2017 tour, when they succumbed to another crushing innings loss in the series opener at Edgbaston only to bounce back with a sensational run-chase at Headingly, while there has been plenty chat in the intervening days about the miracle at Brisbane back in January.
But, with respect to an incisive bowling attack that refused to allow England to run away with the game at Lord’s, it’s all about the batting for West Indies this week. Worryingly, it was hard to point many fingers of blame in that first Test. Brathwaite, their linchpin, endured a fallow game, which did not help, but from Mikyle Louis on debut to the obvious talents of Alick Athanaze, the patches of composure that they showcased were all too often undermined by lapses that screamed, more than anything else, of a lack of experience at this level.
There’s no easy fix, other than learning on the job and hoping that England offer an opportunity to get a toe-hold in the game – perhaps, as Joshua da Silva suggested, by over-reaching themselves in their eagerness to experiment for the Ashes.
But given how stung Ben Stokes was by the suggestion, before Lord’s, that England’s failure to win a Test series in 18 months would be a factor in a more win-at-all-costs attitude in this series, the totality of that Lord’s display was ominous in the extreme. More of the same would appear to be the message. It will have been an astonishing shock for the ages if the teams arrive at Edgbaston next week with series all-square.
ENG vs WI Vital Stats that matters
- West Indies have won four and lost just one of their nine previous Tests at Trent Bridge, including a famous ten-wicket victory in their first appearance there in 1950. Their only loss, however, came in their most recent match, in 2012.
- Chris Woakes will be playing in his 50th Test.
- As if England’s bowlers need any more reminders of their former team-mates’ glories, the Pavilion End at Trent Bridge, the scene of that legendary 8 for 15 in 2015, will be officially renamed in honor of Stuart Broad before the start of the first day’s play.
- Joe Root, currently on 11,804 Test runs, needs 11 more to overtake Mahela Jayawardene at No.9 in the all-time list, and is within touching distance of two West Indies’ greats at Nos.7 and 8 as well, Brian Lara (11,953) and Shivnarine Chanderpaul (11,867).
- This will be the first home Test for England since 2012 without either James Anderson or Stuart Broad in the playing eleven. The last time England played in Nottingham without either of these two players was in 2006
- England have won only one Test against West Indies at Trent Bridge, in 2012. The Caribbean side has won four Tests, with four more games ending in a draw at this venue, but their last win here was back in 1991
- Alick Athanaze, with 213 runs in nine innings, is the highest run-getter for West Indies in the current World Test Championship cycle, and he is placed 40th among the top run-getters in WTC 2023-25
ENG vs WI Probable Playing XI
England:
England as per their tradition, announced their playing XI and they have maintained the same combination as the previous game. The only tweak came in the form of Mark Wood who replaced the retired James Anderson.
England Playing XI: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (c), Jamie Smith (wk.), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Mark Wood, Shoaib Bashir
West Indies:
Kraigg Brathwaite (c), Mikyle Louis, Kirk McKenzie, Alick Athanaze, Kavem Hodge, Jason Holder, Joshua Da Silva, Alzarri Joseph, Gudakesh Motie, Shamar Joseph, Jayden Seales.
ENG vs WI Fantasy XI: Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Gus Atkinson, Jamie Smith, Alick Athanaze, Shamar Joseph, Kraigg Brathwaite, Ben Stokes, Gudakesh Motie.
ENG vs WI In the Spotlight Gus Atkinson and Kraigg Brathwaite
In a single Test appearance at Lord’s, Gus Atkinson landed not only the fourth-best figures by a Test debutant in history, but bettered each and every one of James Anderson’s 188 Test-match analyses. If he thought his team’s new bowling mentor would be a tough act to follow, then he’s somehow raised the stakes for himself as well. The good news for Atkinson and England is that his phlegmatic character seems to be matched by an equally uncomplicated approach.
He kept it simple and direct at Lord’s; a lot of scrambled-seam deliveries on a probing full length, keeping the stumps in play at all times, except when he fizzed in the sort of rib-tickler that dislodged Jason Holder on the second evening.
As Lord’s debuts go, it couldn’t have been further removed from James Anderson’s first visit way back in 2003, when the magic that delivered him his five-for against Zimbabwe also spoke of a fragility that would be exposed fairly ruthlessly by South Africa later that summer. Even if his subsequent returns don’t live up to this first billing, it’s hard to see Atkinson veering far from what he does best.
If West Indies are to gain any traction in this series, they desperately need their senior campaigners to step up. Kraigg Brathwaite did just that at Headingly in 2017, making 134 and 95 as Shai Hope’s under-sung sidekick, and again on home soil two years ago, when another painstaking hundred at Barbados set his side up for their series-sealer in Grenada.
But for all his obdurate qualities, he has managed one half-century in 16 innings since the most recent of his 12 Test hundreds, against Zimbabwe in February 2023. Maybe the loose nature of his first-innings dismissal at Lord’s – hacking outside off at Atkinson’s second ball – will be the jolt he needs to double down on his crease occupation. Either way, he will need support to drag his side back into contention, and few know better than Holder what that can entail.
Though he did his bit with the ball at Lord’s, he was picked off cheaply by Atkinson in each innings. Maybe some of that muscle-memory from his brutal double-century in Bridgetown 2019 can flex back to the fore. For his team’s sake, it might need to.
ENG vs WI Match Prediction
The second Test match between England and West Indies will be in very much favour of the home team. The hosts are more exposed to the home conditions and they have a pretty balanced and experienced side in comparison to the West Indies. England have 90% chances of winning the match as compared to West Indies’ 10%.