Sidebottom edges Windies to brink

Rain had permitted only 9.1 overs as tea approached on the fourth day of the second Test - but that was enough for Sidebottom to take his match figures to eight for 70 as the Windies slumped to 57 for five following on - still needing a further 367 runs to make England bat again.

Operating under cloud cover, the former Yorkshire seamer - playing his first Test for six years, and only his second ever - confirmed his liking for the conditions by getting rid of Sylvester Joseph and then Devon Smith.

It was Liam Plunkett who struck in the four overs possible this morning, having failed to find his direction with more than the odd delivery before getting one straight enough to have Chris Gayle edging behind.

That must have come as something of a relief for wicketkeeper Matthew Prior, who had dropped Gayle on four on Saturday evening but got the left-hander at his second attempt - at the cost of only nine more runs.

When play resumed after a near three-hour rain stoppage, Sidebottom took over.

He had Joseph lbw on the crease with classic left-arm inswing and in his next over shaped the ball the same way to have left-hander Smith edging a catch to Andrew Strauss, who juggled but held on at slip.

The Windies were in dire straits anyway - but with captain Ramnaresh Sarwan highly unlikely to bat because of his shoulder injury, their prospects of avoiding going 1-0 down in this four-Test series appeared to depend almost exclusively on the weather.

Rain immediately brought another stoppage, but it seemed the elements were merely delaying the inevitable.