Chase could leave his teammates playing catch up

Three-Test series
Starts 2pm Thursday

England supporters are used to seeing their team lose early wickets before being bailed out by the middle-order and the West Indies’ innings often follow a similar pattern.

Roston Chase is one of the key men in the middle-order engine-room and he looks overpriced to finish the series at the top of the Windies’ runscoring list.

Chase certainly can’t complain about a lack of time at the crease, having scored 81 and 50 not out in the warm-up game against Essex before unbeaten knocks of 110 and 60 under the floodlights against Derbyshire.

Coming into the first Test with a tour batting average of 301 is never a bad thing and the 25-year-old also had a terrific home series against Pakistan in April and May, with scores of 63, 16 not out, 131, 23, 69 and 101 not out.

Those efforts boosted Chase’s tally to three centuries and three fifties in ten Tests and he may be required for more rescue missions in England.

Joe Root is 5-2 favourite to top-score for England, having finished 131 runs clear of the field in the South Africa series.

New opener Mark Stoneman is 11-2 third-favourite behind Root and Alastair Cook at 10-3, with Tom Westley 7-1 and Dawid Malan 12-1.

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