London: England have comfortably had the better of West Indies throughout their early-season exchanges and the theme continued at Lord's. They raced to a nine-wicket win with 32 balls remaining on the back of an electric opening stand of 119 between Luke Wright and Ravi Bopara. Wright finished with 75 from 38 deliveries after giving the stands a peppering, and confirming his position for the tournament opener, against Netherlands, on Friday.

England's opening combination has never been settled in Twenty20s, but after this effort it's difficult to see these two being separated in the next couple of weeks. The team performance against Scotland was far from convincing, but here England hit their stride with the bowlers and fielders also doing their jobs to hold West Indies to 144.

As the openers did against Scotland they played themselves in for a couple of overs, but the difference was this time they kicked on. Wright struggled initially and the pressure was building, but he found his range as he tucked into Lionel Baker, then Bopara opened up as he took four crunching boundaries off Dwayne Bravo's opening over.

Fletcher's wicket came in an over that encapsulated Twenty20 cricket with 16 runs being traded for two wickets. Two balls later Chanderpaul was brilliantly held at third man by Ryan Sidebottom, who sprinted around to hold the top-edged pull, and showed that his fitness concerns are well behind him. West Indies didn't help themselves with some of their running when Pollard was the second to fall to poor calling as he sprinted up the pitch only to find Marshall hadn't moved an inch.

Rashid was given a bowl ahead of Swann, while Wright was also handed his turn and provided the next breakthrough when Marshall gloved his pull to James Foster. Rashid had looked understandably nervous against Scotland, but after a big first ball wide was more settled in this innings. Helped by the fact West Indies had lost wickets he conceded just a single boundary in his four overs and picked up Bravo who carved down to long-off.

Lendl Simmons should have gone when he had 3 but Asoka de Silva failed to pick up the outside edge off Broad, however he could only add four more before picking out deep-square leg against Swann. Sarwan ran hard towards the end of the innings, but boundaries were difficult to come by throughout the innings. That wasn't a problem England experienced.

Brief Score: England 145 for 1 (Wright 75*, Bopara 60) beat West Indies 144 for 6 (Sarwan 46*) by nine wickets.