West Indies v England: first Test, day three – live!

The weak March sun has emerged and the dog sniffs it out immediately.She leaps on the sofa and hogs the sunny patch. Meanwhile in Antigua (a stilted segue I admit ) there is rain around but they’re hoping to start on time.

Craig Overton is being interrogated by the excellent Mark Butcher, “I felt like I went ok, there wasn’t much swing really. We realised that after the lunch break and realised we had to hit the wicket a bit harder and rely on uneven bounce.”

“There is still a little bit of reverse swing, but the ball is really soft, it’s not carrying so it’s only really the stumps that are in the game.”

My friend said there was no interest in this series, but you can rely on OBO readers. Waiting in my inbox is an email from Derek Stocker in “cold, snowy Bulgaria.”

“As a Ukranian military band dressed in battle fatigues played – Always look on the Bright Side of Life and Don’t Worry, Be Happy, I could not help but think of England in Calypso Country.

“The English ‘supporters’ once again putting the players down. Just wish to point out that it was a marked improvement on the Ashes – just the one duck, and not even a golden one.”

Excellent attitude – gold star.

And a tweet too:

Ali’s bird’s-eye report on yesterday’s action

And Mark Wood on why is was “weird” without Broad and Anderson.

So Day three, what have you in store? After a Wednesday ultimately of disappointment for England’s new opening attack, interspersed with moments of West Indies carelessness with the bat that bordered on England-lite, both teams start the day fairly equally on the Test weighing scales: 100g of jelly v 100g of ice cream.

The new ball lies in sight, the old is soft and pearly-pink but resolutely not disintegrating enough for the umpires to hand over another one. Jack Leach will have a few more overs to get through first.

Wood and Stokes found swing, reverse and conventional, before the ball stopped being tickled; here’s to Woakes and Overton finding their rhythm and confidence with the next new pill. They’ll need to: Jason Holder and Nkrumah Bonner are proving hard to dislodge.

Play starts at 2pm GMT, 10am in Antigua. See you soon!