WEEKEND
BRIEFING
Making of Mason
As Manchester United’s rising
star Mason Greenwood
prepares to take on Chelsea
in the FA Cup semi-final
tomorrow, Paul Hirst charts
his progress from Idle FC in
Bradford to Wembley
PAGES 10-Tiger’s nightmare
Tiger Woods was facing the
prospect of missing the cut at
a tournament he has won on
five previous occasions with
a second round of 76 at the
Memorial in Ohio — his first
event since the lockdown.
PAGE 15‘If it’s impossible
to have the full
stadiums we
dream of, at least
some people
would be a start’
JOSÉ MOURINHO, PAGE 15Flying machine
Ben Ainslie talks to Matt
Dickinson about Team Ineos’s
£8 million British bid for the
Americas Cup that was seen
soaring above the water,
quite literally, on the Solent
this week.
PAGES 16-Guess the season
Ban on goalkeepers handling
back passes is introduced
A post-war top-flight low
3,039 watch Wimbledon v
Everton
Brian Clough retires as a
manager at the end of it
PAGE 13Today
Cricket: third day of second
Test at Old Trafford: England
v West Indies.
Sky Sports Cricket from
10.30am
Football: FA Cup semi-final:
Arsenal v Manchester City
BT Sport 1, 7.45pm
Tomorrow
Football: FA Cup semi-final:
Manchester United v Chelsea.
BBC1, 6pm
Premier League:
Bournemouth v
Southampton.
BT Sport 1, 2pm
Premier League: Tottenham v
Leicester.
Sky Sports Main Event, 4pm.On the box
2 2GS Saturday July 18 2020 | the times
England v West Indies: Second Test
Pope’s dismissal brought Buttler to
the crease in what were the choicest
circumstances for a man under
pressure for runs, with West Indies now
completely on the defensive. Joseph,
who had earlier been given an official
warning for running on the pitch, had
left the field with triceps pain; Shannon
Gabriel, who had bowled another ball
straight to second slip, as he had on the
first day, looked to be running on empty
(although he kept coming, gamely),
while Kemar Roach and Lady Luck
continued to give each other a wide
berth.
Roach must have wondered where
his next wicket was coming from. His
last had come in September 2019, 522
balls ago, in a Test in Kingston, Jamaica,
against India, when he nipped out Virat
Kohli for a duck. Since then, nothing:
nothing at Lucknow, nothing in South-
ampton, and luckless here until Stokes
went for an outrageous reverse hit and
edged behind. Having not let his shoul-
ders droop, few would have begrudged
Roach his due and wouldn’t you know
it, another came immediately when
Woakes edged his first ball to slip. So it
goes in this maddening game, which,
for the moment, Stokes has in the palm
of his hand.There was enough turn and bounce
from Roston Chase, who carried a
heavy load and finished with a five-
wicket haul, to encourage the thoughtScoreboard
ENGLAND First innings
(overnight 207 for three) R B
D P Sibley
c Roach b Chase
Underneath it, wide long on120 372B A Stokes
c Dowrich b Roach
Reverse-sweep, thin edge176 356O J D Pope
lbw b Chase
Squared up, hit knee roll7 7†J C Buttler
c Joseph b Holder
Skied, leg side boundary40 79C R Woakes
c Hope b Roach
Drawn in to drive, to gully0 1S M Curran
c Campbell b Chase
Reverse-sweep to point17 39D M Bess
not out31 26S C J Broad
not out11 14Extras
(b 4, lb 7, nb 8, w 10)29TOTAL (162 overs; 9 wkts dec) 469
Fall of wickets 4-341, 5-352, 6-395, 7-395,
8-426, 9-427.
Bowling Roach 33-9-58-2;
Gabriel 26-2-79-0; Joseph 23.1-5-70-1;
Holder 32-10-70-1; Chase 44-3-172-5;
Brathwaite 3.5-0-9-0.Umpires R Illingworth (Eng) and
M Gough (Eng)WEST INDIES First innings R B
K C Brathwaite
not out6 32J D Campbell
lbw b Curran
Inswinger, beat inside edge12 34A S Joseph
not out14 18Extras 0
TOTAL (14overs; 1 wkt) 32
To bat SD Hope, SSJ Brooks, RL Chase, J
Blackwood, SO Dowrich, *JO Holder, KAJ
Roach, ST Gabriel.
Fall of wicket 1-16.
Bowling Broad 5-1-14-0; Woakes 4-3-2-0;
Curran 3-1-8-1; Bess 2-0-8-0.Chief Cricket
CorrespondentMike
AthertonEmirates Old Trafford (second day of five):
West Indies, with nine first-innings wickets in
hand, are 437 runs behindEngland v West Indies
It was a now familiar celebration: left
hand raised, fingers pointing upwards
except the middle finger bent double at
the knuckle. Early hours in the
morning in Christchurch, New
Zealand, it would have been when Ben
Stokes went through to his tenth Test
hundred, so who knows whether the
family were watching the message that
their son sent. If so, they would have
revelled in another demonstration of
his talent, versatility and extraordinary
drive.
You could make a strong argument
right now that Stokes is England’s best
batsman. Forget best all-rounder,
which he clearly is, and the likeliest
match-winner from any situation, but
best outright batsman too. To make
that case a compelling and unarguable
one, he has to be more ruthless in his
appetite for runs, and that was fully
demonstrated here from first ball to last
in making his second-highest score inTest cricket.
The long, grinding partnership of
260 that he shared with Dom Sibley
was a record for the fourth wicket for
England at the ground, and formed the
centrepiece of the kind of score for
which Joe Root has long been pleading.
Sibley’s second Test hundred was
among the slowest lately for England
but was a very worthy effort, given the
difficulty that many England openers
of recent vintage have endured in
adding a second hundred to a first.
While Sibley remained one-paced
throughout, Stokes’s ability to acceler-
ate suited England’s needs better.
Those efforts — and some breezy
contributions down the order from Jos
Buttler and Dom Bess — allowed Root
to declare with an hour’s play remain-
ing. Did England bat too slowly, with a
run-rate stubbornly subdued in a
match they must win? No. There was
mitigation in the conditions, with the
ball swinging throughout. Even Stokes,
the great adventurer, was not able to
score freely until the afternoon session,
and no one, other than the two stub-
born centurions, looked totally at ease.
With West Indies effectively shut out
of the game, Stuart Broad, white
bandana and all, ran in with vigour
from the James Anderson End, eager to
prove his point. John Campbell
managed to do what David Warner
could not and survive Broad, but was
then beaten by Sam Curran. With the
breeze in his favour, Curran should
have taken the new ball but instead
replaced Chris Woakes and, as he often
does, made an immediate impact, his
lack of height gaining the kind of
leg-before decision that evaded the
taller West Indian bowlers.
Whether England can win will rest
on Manchester’s weather — the
forecast for today is poor — and the
swing bowlers’ ability to exploit the still
useful conditions.Masterful Stokes puts
that Bess’s involvement will not be
incidental to the outcome, and he
should enjoy the footmarks that
Curran will create.
From the moment he came to the
crease in the 32nd over on the first day,
Stokes had the air of a man determined
to make up for errors in Southampton,
where, in chastising batsmen for
throwing away good positions, he was
aiming some barbs in his own direction.
Accordingly, this hundred was his
slowest in first-class cricket and was a
measure of both his desire to atone and
the tricky conditions.
The second day was warmer and
muggier than before, which encour-
aged swing with old and new ball alike.
In the opening hour, West indies beat
the bat 17 times, and 24 times in all
before lunch. Was this unlucky? Could
they, should they, have bowled a fuller
length to take rather than beat the
edge? A bit of both, probably, but the
luck was certainly not with them and
England’s bowlers will feel that with a
fair share of it, they can make life very
difficult over the next three days.
The most intriguing question in an
otherwise forgettable early passage of
play was whether Stokes would beat
Sibley to a hundred, having given the
opener a head start of more than 30
overs. With the best stroke of the
morning off Alzarri Joseph after 90
minutes of play, a firm drive down the
ground, with the maker’s name for all to
see, Stokes joined Sibley in the 90s, and
the race — if you could call it that —
was on.
As it happened, Sibley pipped Stokes
to the post with an equally pleasant
drive down the ground off the same
bowler ten minutes before lunch. The
celebrations, a joyous punch of the air,
began as he completed his second run,
but you had to feel for the young man,
with no crowd present to share the
moment and create a lasting memory.
Stokes lunched on 99.
Acceleration came after reaching his
hundred and was signalled with a
remarkable shot off Joseph that was
staggering in its
simplicity and
savage in result.
It was a
checked drive
for six over
wide mid-
wicket, and it
was followed
by a stare to
the bowler as if
to say, ‘Enough,
now, it’s time for me to
take charge and show the
full range of my talents’.
After taking 255 balls to
his hundred, Stokes’s
next 50 came at quicker
than a run a ball, in just
46 balls all told.
After a mammoth 562
minutes, Sibley hoisted
Chase into the deep.
Ollie Pope then missed
a ball from the spinner
that stuck, comically, in
between his pads. Chase
enjoys bowling against
England and thought he
had Stokes leg-before, too,
lying on the ground in frus-
tration when it was refused.
Stokes was missed at gully by
Shai Hope on 157, the only
chance he gave before over-
ambition eventually got the
best of him.Slowest England
centuries since 1990Stokes celebrates his century by
bending back a finger in honour
of his father, who is missing oneStokes let rip
with a dazzling
display after
lunch but was
beaten to a
century by
Sibley, inset,
who sealed his
second Test tonToday, 11am start
Live: Sky Sports Cricket
Highlights: BBC Two 7pmSecond Test, day three
343 balls
Nasser Hussain v South Africa
Durban, 1999326
Mike Atherton v Australia
Sydney, 1991317
Atherton v Pakistan
Karachi, 2000315
Atherton v West Indies
The Oval, 2000312
Dom Sibley v West Indies
Emirates Old Trafford, yesterday