Powell and Pooran blast West Indies to 21-run victory over England in third T20

A match that offered fabulous entertainment, four marvellous individual innings, 31 sixes and several rewritten records ended with England posting the highest ever second-innings total at Kensington Oval but still losing by 20 runs to a West Indies side propelled to an unreachable total of 224-5 by Rovman Powell and Nicholas Pooran.

Tom Banton’s excellent 39-ball 73 kept England approximately on track to chase down their target, but unlike Pooran a little earlier he did not find a teammate to join him at the crease and help shoulder the burden. Neither Jason Roy nor James Vince could make it out of the teens, Moeen Ali posted his second duck of the series, and Liam Livingstone, playing only after convincing coaches on Tuesday that he had fully recovered from oesophagitis, was clearly unfit, and needed a physio to bring him some medication before he had even faced a ball. By his fifth, he was out.

When Banton himself fell in the following over, picking out Jason Holder at long-on when trying to hit Kieron Pollard for successive sixes, England’s chances seem to dip as precipitously as had the ball. But Phil Salt, one of three England debutants, was superb in scoring 57 off 24 balls before he went in the final over, having kept England’s score soaring at enough of a pace for success to remain a plausible possibility until very nearly the end.

After winning the toss as choosing, as they do, to bat second England hit upon a novel way, though perhaps not the most effective, to reduce attention on their leaky death bowling: to leak runs consistently throughout the innings. As a result, and thanks to some marvellous batting from Pooran and Powell – who both posted the highest T20 score of their careers – West Indies were able