WHAT teachers might have described as the slow but steady progress of England’s bowlers at Sabina Park yesterday was spoilt by a freakish accident to Mark Butcher. It would not, of course, be a proper England tour without some sort of injury in the opening match, but this one is potentially serious enough to disrupt the batting plans for the first Test match starting on this same ground a week tomorrow.

Butcher, who has played in England’s past 35 Test matches, sprained a ligament in his left ankle badly enough to have no chance of taking any further part in the present match. He had jogged to extra cover to intercept a ball being returned to the bowler, Stephen Harmison, heard a shout of “mine” behind him, changed direction in mid-leap, fell awkwardly and had to be carried off the field.

An X-ray at a local hospital showed no fracture but it will be 24 hours before the speed of Butcher’s recovery can be assessed. He was on crutches last night with an “ice machine” attached to the injured ankle and did not hide his disappointment. “To do it in such innocuous circumstances is quite upsetting,” he said. “We were just trying to get the ball back to the bowler. There are countless more dangerous things you can do on a cricket field. You don’t get much time in the middle before the first Test so this is a big blow.”

Butcher’s mother was born in Jamaica but so far this has not been a lucky place for him. He was out for one on Monday to his sixth ball of the tour, but that was five more than he lasted on this ground in 1998 when he was called into the Test side on the morning of the opening match of the series — because Jack Russell had gone down with a severe stomach upset — without having faced a single ball in the warm-up matches.

Coming in at No 3, he received an unplayable ball that exploded off the pitch and was out first ball, a dismissal that has counted in records despite the match being abandoned soon after.

If he cannot make the first Test, it would mean Nasser Hussain moving up to Butcher’s place at No 3 and Paul Collingwood, who became the twelfth England player to bat last night in what can now, therefore, not possibly be called a first-class match, getting another chance. Other than Rikki Clarke it would also leave the side without any batting reserves, so Andrew Strauss will be girding his loins just in case.

Butcher’s resilience should not be underestimated, however. He started his long unbroken run against Australia at Edgbaston in 2001, since when he has scored six centuries and 12 fifties in 63 Test innings.

This personal drama apart, England could be satisfied with their day of hard work yesterday, at least until the muscular Evon McInnis hit 41 from 27 balls with two sixes just before the second new ball was claimed. By then Michael Vaughan had used eight bowlers on a pitch playing so slowly that careful batsmen with decent techniques were hard to remove.

Matthew Hoggard excepted, all the quicker bowlers seemed to be feeling their way and putting control before speed. There will probably be five left-handers in the top seven in the West Indies Test side, so it served the preparatory purpose of this match that the three batsmen who detained the bowlers longest were all left-handed, too.

After the right-handed Danza Hyatt had fallen victim to a brilliant, diving two- handed catch at shoulder height to Marcus Trescothick at first slip off a ball that bounced from Andrew Flintoff, Sean Findlay reached a worthy fifty with some wristy off-side strokes. He became Ashley Giles’s first victim five minutes before lunch when he turned a good-length ball off his legs straight to Hussain.

Two more left-handers, however, Lorenzo Ingram and Mario Ventura played with the occasional élan suggested by their Italianate Christian names until Ingram edged a drive to give Anderson his first wicket of the winter. He claimed another with the second ball to end McInnis’s merry spree but if England’s attack lacked spark, tidiness and control are more important at this stage. The general discipline was helped by the neatness of Chris Read’s work behind the stumps.

Graham Thorpe opened the second innings with Trescothick in what has now become unashamedly a practice match. He hit some rasping shots off the back foot but had already escaped one hard chance when McInnis beat him outside the off stump.

SCOREBOARD FROM KINGSTON

ENGLAND: First Innings 320 (M P Vaughan 105, N Hussain 66, C M W Read 61)

Second Innings
M E Trescothick not out 21
G P Thorpe c Sinclair b McInnis 18
P D Collingwood not out 6
Extras (lb 1, nb 4) 5
Total (1 wkt, 11 overs) 50
M P Vaughan, N Hussain, R Clarke, A Flintoff, C M W Read, A F Giles, S J Harmison and M J Hoggard to bat.

FALL OF WICKETS: 1-29.

BOWLING: McInnis 6-1-26-1; Mais 4-0-20-0; Brown 1-0-3-0.

JAMAICA: First Innings
B A Parchment c Read b Hoggard 0
S A Findlay c Hussain b Giles 51
D J Pagon c and b Hoggard 6
D J Hyatt c Trescothick b Flintoff 21
M D Ventura run out 53
L P Ingram c Read b Anderson 21
M G Sinclair c Read b Anderson 42
B G Brown c Read b Trescothick 14
E G McInnis c Read b Anderson 41
J J Lawson c Vaughan b Hoggard 4
D H Mais not out 0
Extras (lb 9, nb 19) 28
Total (85.2 overs) 281
P Keating did not bat.

FALL OF WICKETS: 1-2 2-23 3-71 4-97 5-156 6-183 7-209 8-268 9-281.

BOWLING:Harmison 16-3-45-0; Hoggard 15.2-4-47-3; Anderson 14-2-42-3; Flintoff 8-1-23-1; Giles 18-4-45-1; Clarke 8-2-29-0; Vaughan 3-0-12-0; Trescothick 3-0-29-1.

Umpires: M Chung (West Indies) and M Noble (West Indies).

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