Day 3 – Session 2: West Indies lead by 77 runs.
Current RR: 3.32
• Min. Ov. Rem: 52.3
• Last 10 ov (RR): 20/3 (2.00)
Three wickets in first session on day three, including Louis for career-best 57
Kavem Hodge pulls during his run-a-ball fifty • Getty Images
Lunch West Indies 282 and 151 for 5 (Louis 57, Hodge 52*) lead England 376 (Smith 95, Root 87, Woakes 62, Stokes 54) by 57 runs
Half-centuries to Mikyle Louis and Kavem Hodge steadied West Indies, who moved to a 57-run lead against England on the third day of their final Test at Edgbaston.
At lunch, Hodge remained unbeaten on 52, Louis having departed for 57 in an eventful morning session which yielded three more wickets after the tourists resumed on a precarious 33 for 2.
Louis added 39 runs to his overnight score and shared a 72-run stand off just 78 balls with Hodge for the fourth wicket.
They came together after Shoaib Bashir accounted for Alick Athanaze, who managed to add 10 runs for the day, including four off Mark Wood through third slip, where Harry Brook got his hands to it but couldn’t hold what would have been a spectacular catch. Athanaze offered West Indies hope after his 82 in the second Test in Nottingham but, five balls after his reprieve, Bashir clipped his front pad with a ball that slid under the attempted sweep.
Hodge gave West Indies similar cause for optimism based on his century at Trent Bridge and he delivered with his second Test fifty. He struck back-to-back fours off Wood, one swung through midwicket and the other from a beautiful drive.
Louis brought up his half-century with a slog-swept six off Bashir and he helped himself to another in Bashir’s next over, clearing the boundary off long-off.
While Ben Stokes was getting the ball to reverse swing, he got Louis fending at one that that pitched on a length outside off stump and edging to Zak Crawley at second slip.
Crawley was in the same position when he dropped Holder, on 12 at the time, off Stokes but the mistake didn’t end up costing anything. Gus Atkinson removed Holder at the end of the next over with an inswinger that struck the front knee-roll, the batter’s review failing when ball-tracking ruled it was umpire’s call on hitting leg stump.
That brought Joshua Da Silva to the crease and he was struck a heavy blow on his right biceps by a Stokes lifter but he survived to be 2 not out at the break.
Valkerie Baynes is a general editor, women’s cricket, at ESPNcricinfo
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