West Indies vs Essex

It's a shame that the warm up matches against the counties usually means that the touring sides usually face second XI bowling attacks. It would have been a really good warm up for the Windies to be facing the likes of Amir, Porter and Harmer. However they do have good young bowlers playing in Walter who has lately been the 3rd seamer for Essex and Beard who is a good prospect although it looks like he struggled a bit yesterday.

Presumably they'll just go out and give it a tonk for 10 overs or until they get out before having a bowl. With no Cook, Westley, Bopara or Foster, the batting looks a bit bare so if they can get through the top 3 or 4 then there is quite a long tail for them to go through.

Well they managed to add 29 runs in 10.2 overs to get to 338/8 declared at 100 overs.

Roach and Cummins are now steaming in for the Windies with Roach removing Chopra in the first over.

Essex were in trouble at 47-4, but rain has caused them to call stumps by 3pm

Was hoping to get more play and see how Browne faired, think he's a dark horse to be opening with Cook for the Ashes (if they happen).

Windies have some proper pace bowlers, Roach was obviously too much for the Essex top order. They'll still be able to force a win tomorrow as Windies just need one more wicket to get into the tail. Will they aim for the win or will they just look to give their batters some more practice?

Probably more batting pratice, as it is a very fragile windies batting line up...take Brahtwaite and Chase out of it, and they would just fold

Chase is a good player, seems to always make runs when I check Windies matches. I like Blackwood too, exciting player.

5 for Roach, I didn't realise he had been out of the test side since Jan 2016. He says he has been working on moving it both ways, if he can do that at his pace, he'll be a huge threat.

Walter played well, useful all-rounder, plucked out of league cricket, played for Billieracy, played against him, good talent, hope he does well

I like the look of him, had a few good displays in the One Day cup before forcing his way into the FC side. Not seen him do too much with the bat but then he's barely played and usually gets sent out at 9 behind Harmer.

Picked up a couple of early wickets too so I can't see him losing his place in the FC side. Beard is getting carted around again, big difference from bursting on the scene last summer and tearing through Pakistan in a warm up game.

Was listening to this game on radio, dunno who was commentating but they were dreadful lol, didn;t get a good idea on performances due to commentators talking utter crap lol.