sport news Defeat to West Indies offer reminder to England that a shocking performance ...

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It was not exactly losing to Scotland but England’s defeat to lowly West Indies in the second one-day international was a stark reminder to the No1 team in the world that they still have a shocking performance in them with time running out before they host the World Cup.

Remember, West Indies are a dismal ninth in the one-day rankings and only just qualified for this summer’s world tournament at the expense of a desperately unlucky Scotland whose victory over England in Edinburgh last summer remains a rare blip for Eoin Morgan’s all conquering side.

Here there was no unplayable bowling to blame nor any demons in a Kensington Oval pitch that was full of runs in the first one-day international and only a fraction more difficult for batting in Friday’s second.

Yet England’s still fragile batting imploded against a 29-year-old saluting journeyman in Sheldon Cottrell who became a late replacement in West Indies squad only when Shannon Gabriel was banned and Keemo Paul was injured.

‘We turn up trying our hardest to win every game but it doesn’t happen every time and we were beaten by the better side today and learning from that isn’t a bad thing,’ said England captain Eoin Morgan. ‘We will see in the next game whether we learn from it or not.’

True, England were the victims of the sort of truly shocking decision by a home umpire that appeared to have been left behind in cricket’s dark ages when Barbadian official Gregory Brathwaite gave Tom Curran out lbw to a ball from Jason Holder that may have missed a second set of stumps.

One local official is still assigned to one-day internationals alongside an ICC elite umpire, in this case Bruce Oxenford, but Brathwaite did not appear up to the task and it did not need technology to show he had made the sort of howler DRS was supposed to eliminate.

It did

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