A new face England suffered a crushing defeat in the first game of their Caribbean tour as the West Indies secured an eight-wicket win in Antigua.

A poor batting performance proved fatal to England’s chances of starting their latest white-ball regeneration with a win, as the tourists lost their last six wickets for 44 runs and were bowled out for 209 runs.

On the field England’s attitude was not to be faulted, but their results were. Jofra Archer and debutant John Turner looked threatening with the new ball, but West Indies opener Evin Lewis was in scintillating form, hitting eight sixes in a match-winning innings of 94 from 69 deliveries as the hosts met their revised target of 157 runs achieved.

The tourists named four debutants in their XI as Jordan Cox, Dan Mousley and Jamie Overton along with Turner made their bow in the ODI format.

In his first act as captain, Liam Livingstone lost a crucial throw. With humid, overcast conditions and an additional threat of rain hanging over the game – which came late and reduced the West Indies’ chase to 35 overs – Shai Hope opted to bowl.

The first 10 overs were a sign of things to come. Both Phil Salt and Will Jacks struggled to reach their usual fluency as a sticky wicket made stroke play difficult. Salt was the first to leave the field when the ball didn’t come into play as hoped and it was well collected by Alzarri Joseph who ran back in the middle.

But if you don’t succeed at first, try, fail, and fail again. Jacks, Cox, Jacob Bethell and Livingstone all fell in similar fashion. To force an attack shot as the ball slowed more than expected in the wicket, each batsman missed a fielder inside the 30-yard circle.

To his credit, Livingstone looked fluent in his 48 runs as the captain and Sam Curran added 72 runs for the fifth wicket. But after Livingstone hit back against the excellent Gudakesh Motie, who scored four for 41, the collapse came. Motie soon struck twice in two balls to dismiss Mousley and then Overton, scoring a golden duck on debut.

“I don’t think we can assess the conditions as well as we could have,” Livingstone said. “When me and Sam were there we were at 240-250, which would have been a challenging total had the conditions not changed.

“We have to get up to speed as quickly as possible. We’ve had a few weeks off and need to try and get into the rhythm of 50-over cricket as quickly as possible. We’ve had four debuts and they will have learned a lot from what they’ve experienced and hopefully move on.”

The result is a familiar story for England in this part of the world. This is their fifth trip to the Caribbean in the last three years and they have lost all previous four series.

But England’s failure with the bat was not entirely their own doing. Motie, an unassuming left-arm spinner, is quietly building a body of work that will propel him into elite society. In 17 ODIs, he has taken 30 wickets at an average of 18.8 and an economy rate of 3.96, although 11 of those encounters came against India, Australia and England.

Jayden Seales also stood out after taking the new ball, finishing with two for 22. The 23-year-old seamer impressed in Sussex this summer and is one of several exciting talents from the Caribbean now coming of age. His first five-over spell was top-notch pace bowling, conceding just eight runs and accounting for both Salt and Jacks.

Lewis put the final nail in England’s coffin. The maverick Trinidadian opener has been rarely seen in the last three years, playing just three T20 tournaments in that time until he returned for the West Indies’ tour of Sri Lanka two weeks ago.

In his first ODI since 2021, Lewis scored 102 from 60 balls at Pallekele before following up with a magnificent innings against England. The 32-year-old hit eight sixes with just five fours and lifted Turner for two sixes that sailed square leg over the party stands before, in a show of real quality, he check-drived Archer over mid-off.

Livingstone and Adil Rashid dismissed Brandon King and Lewis respectively to ensure their side did not fall 10 wickets behind, but it was an overall sobering day for England’s latest new era of white-ball cricket.