Those facts can’t be overlooked, but nor should another display of guts and grit that has helped keep this contest in the balance going into the fourth day. True, Kraigg Brathwaite’s side are perhaps not the likelier winners, with the expectation that they will be asked to pull off a record chase on this ground. There’s an element of regret, too, given the errors on day one that prevented them from bowling England out for a score in the region of 300-350, and how that might have tipped the scales.
It is also the case that (spoiler alert) a mention for Tino la Bertram Best, the fast-living former fast bowler whose charisma outshone his record during a colourful international career that came to an end a decade ago, does not evoke the halcyon days of West Indian Test dominance on these shores in the way that some other names might. But bear with me.
Their stand of 71 off 78 balls included one almighty Shamar pull that smashed into the tiles on the roof of the Larwood & Voce bar and sent debris raining down on the crowd seated below. “He’s going to have to pay for that,” Da Silva joked afterwards.
There’s nothing like tail-end humpty to scatter the pigeons and get the beans going, and Joseph lived up to his billing as an agent of chaos. Momentum has ebbed and flowed in this Test but West Indies looked to be subsiding meekly after losing 4 for 31 in little more than an hour’s play on the third morning. Enter Joseph, with his megawatt grin and an Acme hammer straight out of a Warner Bros cartoon replaced by a bat.
Having seen off Chris Woakes’ hat-trick ball, he was soon demonstrating some of the shots that made his position at No. 11 in the order – below Jayden Seales, who was bowled through the gate by Woakes first ball – seem an anomaly. A jaunty 36 off 41 on debut in Adelaide six months ago was precursor to his heroics with the ball in that series and, while we have so far not seen the best of his bowling in England, this was another slice of brawling brilliance from the boy from Baracara.
Joseph clobbered 32 of his 33 runs in boundaries, with Gus Atkinson bearing the brunt. Two attempts to bounce the smaller man disappeared into the stands in the space of three balls: the first a flat smear into the Fox Road Stand that could have been hit by fellow Guyanese Roy Fredericks, followed by the exuberant hoy over deep backward square leg that left its mark on the roof.
Here was another Tino echo, a “mind the windows” moment but with England as the punchline instead. As West Indies galloped into an unexpected lead, there was plenty to enjoy for those wearing maroon dotted around the ground, particularly a clutch of supporters in the lower tier of the Radcliffe Road Stand.
“He was pretty confident but I still had to shield him because he’s still No. 11,” Da Silva said. “He backs himself with the bat, he played some terrific shots, he broke a couple of tiles, which was good to see. But at the end of the day, it was my job to try and get the team as far as we can.”
Woakes, while conceding that the partnership had got away from them, said that England were content with the eventual outcome after West Indies had resumed on 351 for 5.
“Once a field goes out, as a bowler, it’s easy to not try and get [the set batter] out and try and think of the No. 11,” he said. “But at the same time, you don’t just want to give away easy boundaries, and I think particularly here at Trent Bridge it is easy to leak boundaries, especially when a guy is in and the field’s up. So that was in our mindset, and also you don’t probably always expect the No. 11 to hit a couple into the stands either.
“Fair play to them, I thought they played it pretty well. [But] I think we committed to it for long enough and eventually got the reward.”
Alan Gardner is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo. @alanroderick