Leaders stand up on day-night debut

Alastair Cook and captain Joe Root both scored hundreds as England dominated the West Indies on day one of the inaugural day-night Test on English soil at Edgbaston.

England were 3-348 at stumps on the first day of what is just the fifth day-night Test to be played worldwide.

Cook was 153 not out after more than six hours at the crease. Together with Root (136), he put on 248 for the third wicket.

The past and present England skippers had come together with their side faltering at 2-39 after both debutant Mark Stoneman and Tom Westley had been dismissed for 8.

Dawid Malan, given a reprieve on 2, was 28 not out at the close.

Root's 11th fifty in successive Tests was a new England record and just one shy of South Africa star AB de Villiers's mark of 12.

For Cook, already England's leading Test run-scorer and century-maker, this was his 31st hundred at this level.

The West Indies, Test cricket's dominant force in the 1970s and 1980s, have long struggled away from home. During the past 20 years, excluding matches against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, they've won just three out of 86 Tests outside the Caribbean.

They arrived in England without several star players, the legacy of a bitter dispute with West Indies administrators and the lure of the Caribbean Premier League Twenty20 tournament that is taking place at the same time as this series.

Yet they still had two early wickets under sunny blue skies that promised ideal batting conditions.

Stoneman's first two scoring shots in Test cricket were fours off Kemar Roach. But that was as good as it got for the left-hander, brought in after England dropped Keaton Jennings following a run of low scores during the preceding 3-1 home Test series victory against South Africa.

Roach clean bowled Stoneman with a superb ball that pitched on middle stump and clipped the top of off.

Westley was then lbw on review to Miguel Cummins.

Cook and Root, however, repaired the damage.

Cook reached a half-century before lunch and after the interval, Root went to an 83 ball-fifty when a flashing cut off opposing skipper Jason Holder flew through the slips for four.

Root, who made 190 against South Africa in his first match as England captain at Lord's last month, pulled off-spinner Roston Chase to fine leg for a 19th boundary that saw him complete his 13th Test century in 139 balls.

Cook then went to an understated but no less valuable 182-ball hundred with a single off Chase.

For all the talk of what the pink ball might do and the difficulties of batting in twilight, it looked as if England's top-order mainstays would both get through to the close. Root, however, was surprisingly bowled between bat and pad by the persevering Roach.

Malan had made 2 when an edged cut off part-time spinner Kraigg Brathwaite hit Jermaine Blackwood before the slip could react.

The West Indies' woes then intensified when paceman Holder left the field with a neck injury midway through bowling an over before Cook's legside clip off fast bowler Alzarri Joseph, the opener's 23rd four, took him to 150.