KINGSTON – Fast bowlers Shamar Joseph and Jay­den Seales, along with pac­er Justin Greaves bowled West In­dies in­to a po­si­tion of au­thor­i­ty against Aus­tralia at the end of the open­ing day of the third day/night Test at Sabi­na Park in Ja­maica on Sat­ur­day.

How­ev­er, in­juries to open­ing bats­men Mikyle Louis and John Camp­bell while field­ing, as well as fast bowler Alzarri Joseph, have left the home side in a wor­ry­ing po­si­tion as they await re­ports on the ex­tent of their in­juries.

Louis, called up to re­place the out-of-form Kraigg Brath­waite, in­jured his knee while field­ing in the out­field, while Camp­bell was hit in the chest at short leg.

Ex­clud­ing the in­juries, it was a pro­duc­tive day for the West In­dies, and even with Alzarri on­ly be­ing able to send down sev­en overs be­fore be­ing tak­en for scans af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dis­com­fort while bowl­ing, they were still able to bowl out the vis­i­tors for 225, af­ter they won the toss and elect­ed to bat first.

The trio or­ches­trat­ed a mid­dle-or­der bat­ting col­lapse that saw Aus­tralia lose their last sev­en wick­ets for just 68 runs af­ter Cameron Green and Steven Smith had worked to re­build the in­nings.

With the Windies then hav­ing to face a nervy 50 min­utes un­der the lights, they reached 11 for one, with debu­tant Kevlon An­der­son asked to open, be­ing the lone wick­et to fall.

Aus­tralia’s open­ing pair of Sam Kon­stas and Us­man Khawa­ja strug­gled to get go­ing on a pitch that of­fered bounce and move­ment for the bowlers.

Kon­stas was just one when he edged Jay­den Seales to slip, but An­der­son could not hold on­to the chance at third slip div­ing to his left.

The two laboured while adding 28 runs in 16 overs, be­fore Greaves trapped Kon­stas lbw for 17 off 53 balls with his very first de­liv­ery.

Green and Khawa­ja took them to tea at 50 for one, but at a pedes­tri­an run rate of ex­act­ly two runs an over.

Khawa­ja’s tor­rid time at the crease af­ter scor­ing 23 runs from 92 balls came to an end af­ter the in­ter­val, when his out­side edge off Shamar Joseph was spec­tac­u­lar­ly tak­en one-hand­ed by wick­et­keep­er Shai Hope div­ing to his left to leave the Aussies 68 for two.

How­ev­er, Smith then joined Green at the crease and to­geth­er they frus­trat­ed the home side for two hours dur­ing a part­ner­ship of 61 that threat­ened to turn the match in their favour.

Smith showed his in­ten­tions by pulling a short de­liv­ery from Shamar Joseph for four and fol­lowed that up by dri­ving Greaves for three con­sec­u­tive bound­aries.

He too was lucky not to be dis­missed when he was 24, but left-arm spin­ner Jomel War­ri­ca spilled a tough caught and bowled op­por­tu­ni­ty.

But just when it looked like both bats­men were on the verge of half cen­turies they lost their wick­ets.

Green was spec­tac­u­lar­ly bowled for 46 by an un­playable de­liv­ery from Seales that hit the top of off stump, while Smith was caught at first slip by Bran­don King off the bowl­ing of Shamar Joseph, as Aus­tralia slipped to 157 for four.

The end came soon af­ter for the Aussies, with Joseph dis­miss­ing Beau Web­ster for one, Travis Head fell to a spec­tac­u­lar div­ing catch by sub­sti­tute field­er An­der­son Phillip off Greaves, who al­so had Alex Carey caught be­hind to make the score 198 for sev­en.

Cap­tain Pat Cum­mins hit a few lofty blows in his knock of 24 off 17 balls, but Seales dis­missed both him and Mitchell Starc for a duck, and Joseph wrapped up the in­nings by snar­ing the wick­et of Josh Ha­zle­wood.

Joseph led the Windies once again with fig­ures of 4-33, Greaves took 3-56 and Seales 3-59.

With none of the open­ers avail­able, Bran­don King and An­der­son took on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of see­ing out Aus­tralia’s dan­ger­ous four-pronged at­tack.

An­der­son nev­er looked com­fort­able against Starc, play­ing in his 100th Test, and it came as no sur­prise when he was bowled off the in­side edge for just three with the score on 11.

How­ev­er, King and cap­tain Ros­ton Chase bat­ted out the re­main­ing overs safe­ly to en­sure there were no fur­ther loss­es.

CMC

Sum­marised scores

AUS­TRALIA 225 in 70.3 overs (Steven Smith 48, Cameron Green 46, Pat Cum­mins 24, Us­man Khawa­ja 23, Alex Carey 21, Travis Head 20, Sam Kon­stas 17; Shamar Joseph 4-33, Justin Greaves 3-56, Jay­den Seales 3-59).

WEST IN­DIES 16-1 in nine overs.