The real damage for England could last longer than this painful Test

Adil Rashid could not be trusted and Sam Curran simply could not hit the pitch hard enough, while Moeen Ali was only intermittently able to keep the runs down. So Root kept flogging Anderson and Stokes. The captaincy was too passive; he had to remove them from the firing line, especially given the pitch had flattened out.

Root came on and bowled a few overs himself, but should have asked more of his frontline spinners. Then Keaton Jennings appeared, and immediately brought a half-chance, that Rory Burns could not cling on to, although it turned out he was only on so Anderson could swap ends for his 44th over of the match. By the time Holder reached his double-century, Root and Jennings were bowling in tandem.

Edges drawn fell short of the ran through the cordon. One proper chance went down, Holder shelled by the diving Ben Foakes on 151 off Stokes, but the damage was done by then; the captain was merely waiting to see when Dowrich would bring up his centuries. The rare lbw appeals, like Root on Dowrich and Curran on Holder, were muffled and rare. Of course they had burnt their reviews the evening before.

The seeds of all this were sewn at the toss, which Root lost, and saw him hand over a team-sheet that was flawed in at least one way. Stuart Broad should have played and Rashid, whose positive contributions have been limited to a couple of lovely whips to leg in his first innings 12 – joint second-best in 77 all out. Having taken the second day off, Broad took the field in England’s 200th over in the dirt. England fans cheered ironically.

Perhaps the problems began even earlier than that. England pulled off an historic win in Sri Lanka, which swelled their confidence. Without wishing to denigrate that achievement in the slightest, they had some major advantages there. They knew what the conditions would be, with spin dominant. Trevor Bayliss and Paul Farbrace had coached Sri Lanka before so knew the venues and players, while much of the squad had played the white-ball leg before. The opposition were meek and poor, and they won all three tosses to boot. The result was pitch perfect planning and a whitewash.

This time, England have had no such advantages – they knew far less and were up against much more. Local expertise was lacking and, after a Christmas break, so was match practise. Their two two-day matches last week pleased them and provided adequate middle practise but failed them against the West Indies’ superb pace attack who found bounce, pace, seam and swing. Alien conditions meant they over-thought the team.

For all this Holder and, to a lesser extent, Dowrich were excellent. So were Burns and, to a lesser extent, Jennings in navigating England to the close wicketless. You would have got long odds on that when Holder declared, but the road ahead is far longer.