Strauss takes win however it comes

The tourists, without a win in 13 international matches this winter, were stunned to witness West Indies walk off the pitch for bad light trailing by one run on the Duckworth Lewis method for calculating interrupted matches with 3.4 overs remaining.

"We've been working really hard for the last few weeks, starting with the last three Tests and after the Twenty20 defeat the guys have been putting it in really hard," said Strauss. "That's quite dispiriting if you don't get anything to show from the hard work or any reward for it so a win was desperately needed - you don't expect to win in that fashion, but we'll take a win."

Darren Sammy and Nikita Miller had been given the signal by coach John Dyson, who believed at 244 for seven, chasing England's 270 for seven, they were ahead and they would have won the game.

But moments later it became clear that Dyson, who was among the candidates to become the permanent England coach, had mis-read the Duckworth Lewis tables and effectively handed the game to the tourists.

England effectively sealed their triumph with Stuart Broad winning an lbw appeal against Dinesh Ramdin on what proved to be the final ball of the match, which put the tourists back in front in the Duckworth Lewis tables.

Dyson failed to read the right column to gift England the win.

But West Indies captain Chris Gayle claimed the team had accepted the coach's apology and were not blaming him for losing a match they appeared to be winning, especially after Shivnarine Chanderpaul hit 26 off one Steve Harmison over during a stunning innings of 46 off 30 balls.

"He was looking in the wrong column," confirmed Gayle. "He explained it to us and apologised for that mistake.

"We're very disappointed to lose the game in this way, but in these circumstances no one wants to make this sort of mistake and I'm not going to kill him or anything like that. There is no reason to point any fingers at this point in time. We're here as a team and we'll go down as a team."