Bravo keeps the discipline required

Confronted with the weight of statistics, it's getting easier to think of England as firm favourites to win a Test against West Indies. Victories at Headingley and The Oval at the end of 2000, a 3-0 triumph in the Caribbean a few months ago, and then the Lord's win on Monday add up to six wins in seven meetings - heady stuff indeed.

Despite that, and despite the runs gushing from the bat last Thursday, there was something vaguely improper about Andrew Strauss and Marcus Trescothick zinging along first thing this morning. Last time West Indies were playing a Test in Birmingham, Ambrose and Walsh were strangling Mark Ramprakash's career as a Test opener - his failings would let in Trescothick - en route to an innings victory inside three days. Five years earlier, ditto: innings victory in three days.

So to see the ball thudding into the Edgbaston boards with Twenty20 regularity, as it did early on, was still a shock to the system, even if it was as much a continuation of form as a break with tradition. Far too many deliveries from the opening pair, Pedro Collins and Corey Collymore, were sent down towards the left-handers' leg stumps. At this rate, England would slam 450 or so in the day.

But as the American presidential hopeful John Kerry is keen on saying: "It doesn't have to be this way." And after the scattergun opening attack, Brian Lara introduced Jermaine Lawson and Dwayne Bravo. Lawson's arrival staunched the expansive shots, while three of Bravo's first four overs were maidens. His wide-of-off-stump line was not especially pretty, but it was disciplined - and it did the job for Lara.

The pressure grew until Strauss - who has largely seemed immune thus far in his international career - went chasing one from Lawson best left alone, and the breach was made. Bravo, who showed great consistency in length, and especially width - so much so that he regularly flirted with being called wide - was particularly accurate bowling at Flintoff. Time and again, Freddie wisely left well alone, and Graham Thorpe comfortably outscored him in their fifty stand.

Trescothick's batting was all or nothing: flurries of boundaries punctuating periods of introspection. But he played convincingly if not commandingly, eventually becoming only the third Englishman to hit a Test hundred against West Indies on this ground. (The other two were Peter May and Colin Cowdrey, who shared a stand of 411 here 47 years ago.)

Otherwise, it was a case of getting in and getting out. Key bemoaned the lack of leg-side fodder he had tucked into at Lord's and never wholly settled, Vaughan's run of three successive centuries against West Indies came to an end after threading two immaculate boundaries, and Thorpe crafted an unobtrusive and altogether classy half-century.

On a pitch that looks happy to ooze more runs, play ended four overs early for bad light. If West Indies are quick in separating Flintoff and Geraint Jones - another man to outscore Freddie in a fifty stand - they may yet take a first-innings lead. Given England's coruscating recent form, you have to think that West Indies just edged the opening day.