England unleash Bazball on West Indies in Nottingham Test

England have begun their second Test against the West Indies with a hiss and a roar, racking up 416 runs on day one in Nottingham.

Trent Bridge is arguably where ‘Bazball’ — England’s ultra-aggressive approach to Test cricket — first began, and the English batsmen did the ground justice on Thursday.

While Zak Crawley fell for a first-over duck, Ben Duckett was in the mood to score.

The 29-year-old raced out to a 32-ball half-century, setting the tone for what would be a rollicking English innings.

Pope top scores as England set imposing total

In true Bazball fashion, England were at the crease for a good time, not a long time.

Duckett fell for 71 runs from 59 balls, but it was his partner Ollie Pope who anchored the home side’s total.

Pope went on to make a 167-ball 121, recording his sixth century in Test matches.

Joe Root came and went quickly, but Harry Brook, Ben Stokes, Jamie Smith and Chris Woakes all made rapid, healthy contributions.

Brooks was the most adventurous of those, with 36 runs from 34 balls, but captain Stokes made the more meaningful addition to the scoreline, picking up 69 runs in an 80-run partnership with Pope.

West Indies take wickets but face uphill battle

The good news for the West Indies is they managed to take all 10 English wickets on day one of the Test match.

The bad news is two of their top three bowlers went at over a run a ball.

Alzarri Joseph did the most damage with three wickets but leaked 98 runs at an economy of 6.32. Jayden Seales was not much better, going at 6.00 for his two wickets.

Only Kevin Sinclair was both economical and took wickets, going at 3.31 and dismissing Brook and Gus Atkinson.

Any chance the visitors had of leaving Trent Bridge with a victory have become slimmer after day one.

Their odds of winning the second Test have lengthened to +1600 at cricket bookmakers, with England returning just -909.09 to take a 2-0 lead in the series.

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