Drip by drip, drop by drop, West Indies lose their grip on the Test

Shannon Gabriel is standing mid-pitch and screaming; the ball has gone, Jason Holder is still on his hands and knees watching it roll off to the boundary. The ball was overpitched by Gabriel, misfielded by Holder. At stumps last night, West Indies should have won this Test.

West Indies' bad day actually started last night when they dropped Joe Root. It was not the first time they had dropped him in this Test; they'd done it in the first innings as well. Root averages over 50, and other than a failure to turn fifties into hundreds as often as his talent suggests he should, gifting him chances in successive innings is about as silly as it gets. When West Indies finally caught Root, it was a fumbled catch on the second grab. They were one panicked clutch away from dropping Root three times in one match.

But when they got Root out, it wasn't as if magical things started happening. They immediately shelled Dawid Malan instead. Shane Dowrich - the specialist wicket keeper who has managed nine runs in his three innings - dived across first slip only to move his hands like a bullfighter withdrawing his cape at the last minute. Leaving Kieran Powell with a nasty surprise, and West Indies with another drop.

It wasn't quite as heinous an error. Missing Malan doesn't carry with it that same sense of dread, mostly because Malan's innings never threatened to get much better than it already was. It was a collection of scratchy shuffles with about as much timing as a fart during a eulogy. Aesthetically, it didn't get any better, but it did double: 32 from 96 balls before the drop, 29 from 90 after it.

To focus on the drops alone would be awful enough, but then there was West Indies' general mismanagement of their bowlers. Devendra Bishoo was still treated like the kid who told the teacher there was supposed to be a quiz today. Holder said yesterday he preferred to use Roston Chase because of the footmarks outside the left-handers' off stump. Hey, Jase, legspinners can aim at those footmarks too, and being that they spin the ball into the stumps, it usually makes them more dangerous too.

Then there was the familiar Holder trick of not taking the second new ball straight away, so that the quicks, in a five-man bowling attack, could have it after lunch and be more rested. Not that it mattered, because when they did finally take it, they wasted it. Kemar Roach aggressively ignored the stumps and barely made England play. There were full tosses as well, plus the now-customary wasted balls down the leg side.

This innings, West Indies didn't drop Stokes once, but they dropped him twice in the first innings. When they did take Stokes' wicket, it was over an hour after the second new ball and had little to do with the quality of the bowling. Stokes was caught at long-off for 58, trying to move the game on.

Then Bairstow came in, and if any batsman was going to dropped, he was the most likely candidate. Since August 2015, Bairstow has been dropped 13 times according to CricViz, the equal-most in cricket in that time (alongside Alastair Cook). This time, the drop only cost five runs.

But still West Indies found ways to make mistakes. After tea, England's bowlers were confronted with a change-of-ends over of the highest pressure from recently reported offspinner Kraigg Brathwaite, who started with a full toss. That's not actually doing the delivery justice; it was almost a moon ball, it wouldn't have dismissed a pot plant.

When Bishoo was finally treated like a proper bowler, he found the edge of Moeen Ali. Dowrich took a very tough under-edge, maybe the best take all day, but it was a no-ball. You could certainly make some valid arguments about this being an incorrect no-ball call. Umpire S Ravi seemed to call the no ball based on where Bishoo's foot ended up landing, and not on its first contact with the pitch, when his heel was still in the air and probably a millimetre or two behind the line. But what was a legspinner doing so close to the line in the first place?

Moeen didn't ask questions; he just made an extra 52 runs. In the grand scheme of West Indies' errors, it wasn't as costly as Bishoo's double run-out errors from yesterday.

But what makes all of this so sad is that West Indies could have been so much better. Their bowling was a mess in the last Test, often senseless. This time, they rolled England on day one, and then had England three-down for under 100 runs in the second innings too, even after the pitch had flattened out. In the first Test, their batting was non-existent. This time they fought, got a lead, made hundreds, and their lower order chipped in too. And after all that, after such a comprehensive remodelling of their games and such a determination to stand up to a better team, they go and drop a whole bunch of catches.

According to CricViz, West Indies have the second-lowest catches per drop; only Zimbabwe are worse in Tests. West Indies take 2.74 catches per drop over the last two years, while the best team, New Zealand, take 5.17 catches per drop. West Indies are essentially half the catching team New Zealand are. They have looked about a quarter as good this Test, taking 1.71 for every drop.

In this match, West Indies have dropped catches on seven occasions. It has cost them 238 runs, and their total to chase is 322. They screamed, looked confused, shook their heads, got up slowly, shrugged. They stared at boundaries of batsmen who shouldn't still be there.

When Chris Woakes brought up his fifty, West Indies had taken five wickets in the day, but England's two-run overnight lead had grown past 300. Kyle Hope stood at midwicket with his hands on his hips. A few balls later, West Indies had a glimmer of a run-out chance, but the throw was bad, and fumbled by Dowrich, it was the last run England would score before declaring. Kyle Hope put his hands back on his hips, but also looked up at the sky. At stumps tomorrow night, West Indies should have lost this Test.