AN all too familiar story unfolded on the third day of the second Test here yesterday.
With vice-captain Ramnaresh Sarwan fashioning his sixth Test hundred, his first against England, and sharing successive partnerships of 209 with captain Brian Lara and 76 with the previously immovable Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the West Indies remained in contention throughout the first session.
As usual, they lacked the confidence and concentration necessary to challenge England's sizeable first innings 556 for nine declared.
The dismissal of Sarwan, bowled off the inside-edge by Andy Flintoff, England's latest new Ian Botham, for 139 in the fifth over after lunch, set off such a collapse of the brittle lower order that the last seven wickets went down in a heap for 39 from 20.5 overs, the last six for 13 off 10.
Four were claimed in his last four overs by left-arm spinner Ashley Giles, the Lord's Man of the Match now on the ground where he plays his county cricket for Warwickshire. He now has 22 wickets in the five Tests this summer, the first three against New Zealand. It presented England with a lead of 230 that was sufficient for captain Michael Vaughan to press them into batting again.
On a wearing pitch of increasingly variable bounce and encouraging turn, he predictably opted against the follow on and, by close, the advantage was extended to 378.
With two days remaining, there is ample time for England to complete their second victory of the series.
But the second innings wickets of Andrew Strauss, Robert Key and Vaughan himself, all to Jermaine Lawson, by the time the total was 52, should have rekindled West Indian interest.
Once again, they lacked the conviction to seize the moment. Their intensity, as keen as it has been all series at the start of England's innings, rapidly vanished, and their body language, not least the captain's at slip, exposed a team resigned to the inevitability of defeat.
The left-handers Marcus Trescothick and Graham Thorpe, both of whom offered unaccepted catches, restored normal service with a third wicket stand worth 94 when the day ended with England 148 for three.
Trescothick resumes this morning 12 short of repeating Vaughan's feat in the first Test of hundreds in both innings. It would be the seventh for England in four innings, a measure of the ineffectiveness of the West Indies bowling, and fielding.
Yet there was genuine cause for West Indian optimism in the way Sarwan and Lara responded to the crisis of the previous day.
They came together at 12 for two before tea to reel of a six and 17 fours between them adding 172 in the two hours, 25 minutes that remained and there was more of the same right away.
After Sarwan played out a maiden from Jimmy Anderson, Lara despatched his first two balls, from Matthew Hoggard, to the boundary, through mid-off and mid-wicket, with strokes of breathtaking style and certainty.
A chance for Sarwan at 92, off a fierce cut from the steady Anderson that burst through Thorpe's hands at gully, hinted that the luck was with the West Indies.
Vaughan then summoned Flintoff to replace Hoggard, whose four overs had yielded 27, and right away Lara, five away from his 27th Test hundred, was ill at ease.
He just kept out Flintoff's third delivery, a slower yorker that he seemed to sight late in flight. Something - what, it was impossible to know - so concerned him, he strolled away from the pitch, shaking his head, spoke to Sarwan and even involved umpire Simon Taufel.
He flailed at the next ball, well up and wide of off-stump, and sliced it high to fine gully where Thorpe atoned for his earlier miss off Sarwan with a leaping, two-handed catch.
The celebrations as Lara walked away were understandably overstated. To remove a batsman for 95 who has already chalked up scores of 375 and 400 not out against you is surely a signal triumph.
They were tempered, however, by the arrival of another left-hander. They were unable to dismiss Chanderpaul in ten and a quarter hours batting at Lord's while he scored 103 and 97 and he immediate assumed similar mode.
A careless Chanderpaul stroke in this form is as rare as a hurricane in February but there was one when he was 21, an ondrive when not to the pitch off Giles. It presented Vaughan at close-in midwicket with a straight forward, head high catch but he let it slip through his grasp.
By lunch, Sarwan was 135, Chanderpaul 27 and, at 288 for three, the West Indies were in fair shape - except that England knew from recent first-hand experience that one wicket could set off a terminal collapse.
It arrived within quarter-hour of resumption when Sarwan, shaping for his favourite cut shot off Flintoff, underedged the ball back into his stumps.
His innings occupied five minutes over five hours and 226 balls with a high proportions of 25 fours, mostly wristy cuts and drives through the off-side.
After his double lbw failure at Lord's, where he seemed out of sorts, his return to form was a tribute to his resilience.
The collapse was not nigh at hand but there was little indication of it as Dwayne Bravo remained with Chanderpaul for the next three quarters of an hour in a partnership of 36.
The new ball became due but Vaughan, encouraged by Giles' control of flight and spin from over the wicket and his second innings dismissal of Bravo at Lord's, declined to remove his left-arm spinner.
It was a wise decision.
Bravo, aiming to turn one delivered from round the wicket that spun across him, was bowled off-stump.
Ridley Jacobs followed at the opposite end, edging a drive to slip off Hoggard, as he did in the second innings at Lord's and Chanderpaul followed for 45 to a silly point catch off Giles in the next over.
It was the first time Chanderpaul had been dismissed since the first Test against Bangladesh in St.Lucia in late May, a gap of 17 hours, 11 minutes. It was still well short of the 25 hours, 13 minutes he once had between dismissals, a Test record.
The tailenders once more put up little resistance, a stark contrast to England's hard-hitting No.11, Steve Harmison, on the previous day.
Pedro Collins and Corey Collymore fell to Giles, Omari Banks to Harmison as a sell-out crowd, hundreds of them in fancy dress that has become part of the Saturday tradition at Edgbaston, once more celebrated at West Indies' expense.
They were muted when three England wickets quickly fell to Lawson. Strauss was caught behind chasing a wide one, Key and Vaughan popped up catches to Gayle at mid-on, Vaughan's spectacularly held, backtracking, one-handed and overhead.
Another couple of wickets by stumps would not have put the West Indies in a winning position but certainly in a better frame od mind. The chances for them were missed.
Thorpe's, at 8, was simple. He chased a wide one from Collins, got a thin edge and Jacobs muffed it. Trecothick's was stiffer, at 70, a right-handed return on the follow-through to Bravo.
It allowed both to return today when the only question is when will England declare.