England will resume on Tuesday morning needing a further 28 runs to secure victory in the 2nd Test in Trinidad, and with it retain the Wisden Trophy.

At close on Monday evening the tourists had reached 71-2 in their second innings, with Mark Butcher and Nasser Hussain poised to make the final sprint for the finish line on the final morning.

Indeed, had the sunset over the Queen's Park Oval come 20 minutes later England would in all probability by now be celebrating their second Test win within eight days.

They had already raced to within sight of their 99-runs target with only 10 overs bowled, a phenomenal rate of scoring given the struggles both sides have had on this pitch.

Alas, though, Marcus Trescothick failed once more here, and his dreadful run shows no signs of ending. This time he was undone by a rocket of a ball from Tino Best, only the third of England's innings, which tore along the deck and smashed into the lower portion of his off stump. Given that he'd whipped the first ball of the innings past backward square for four, and then watched the second scream down the leg side and past 'keeper Ridley Jacobs for four byes, it was quite an opening over.

His demise brought Butcher to the crease, and the most fluent of England's top order soon settled into an easy scoring rhythm.

In tandem with captain Michael Vaughan he'd given the scoreboard operators their busiest spell of work during the match, picking up 33 from 27 balls, while Vaughan helped himself to 23 from 24, including a thumping pulled six off Best.

He may count himself a little unlucky not to have been there at the close too, given out lbw to Adam Sanford when replays suggested he'd got his front foot outside the line of off stump, but that's the way of these things when your luck's not in.

He'll have been happy enough by the end though, and is a couple of good sessions away (during the 3rd Test in Barbados) from being the first English captain in 36 years to produce a series win in the Caribbean. Glorious days, indeed.

It certainly was for young Simon Jones; Monday marked his first five-wicket haul in Test cricket, and perhaps the end of a long journey back from the despair of Brisbane in November 2002.

Gayle, Devon Smith, Sarwan, Jacobs and Collins will all confirm that he's doing just fine, and his 5-57 from 15 hostile overs was just what the doctor would have ordered.

Of his five victims Jacobs was the most impressive; pressed, somewhat bafflingly into service at number four, he set about his business in his own effective way, and his 70 was the outstanding batting contribution by a West Indian in this match.

The move allowed captain Brian Lara to drop to number six for the cover-all 'tactical reasons', but all it meant in practice was that he got to the eye of the storm with four wickets down instead of the usual two.

Steve Harmison soon nipped him out in any case with a smart piece of thinking, pitching his first ball right up when Lara expected a repeat of his first innings throat-kisser.

His first impulse was to go back, rather than forward, and by the time he'd corrected the error the game was up.

Come the first five or six overs on Tuesday, and it surely will be.

22 Mar, 2004