The players of the Test series were Malcolm Marshall for West Indies for his 35 wickets and Graham Gooch for England, who scored 459 runs and ended the summer as captain.

The experienced batsmen Viv Richards (the captain), Gordon Greenidge, Jeff Dujon, and Desmond Haynes were aged 36,[6] 37,[7] 32,[8] and 32[9] respectively at the start of the Test series, and bowlers Michael Holding and Joel Garner and batsman Larry Gomes had recently retired.

[15] By contrast, the English team had suffered a run of bad performances spanning several years, winning only seven of their previous 52 Tests.

[17] Before this, they had endured a "hostile" and highly controversial tour of Pakistan,[18] during which an argument between captain Mike Gatting and umpire Shakoor Rana had led to a diplomatic incident.

[19] The three match series was lost 1–0, but the "teasing, taunting ... bemusing"[20] performance of leg-spinner Abdul Qadir, who took 30 wickets in three Tests,[19] was unlikely to be repeated, given that the West Indies' only specialist spinner was Roger Harper,[10] an off-break bowler.

[21] Despite having lost 5–0 to the West Indies in each of the two most recent series,[16] England had grounds for optimism, following good performances in the shorter form of the game: the team had reached the World Cup Final the previous year, losing to Australia.

[22] Writing in the Daily Mirror, Mike Bowen disparaged Gatting's captaincy, but talked up England's chances, based on their batting line-up.

[23] Gatting entered the summer as incumbent, but his position had been undermined by poor England Test performances and his on-field spat with Shakoor Rana.

[25] The cadence of the summer's contest was summed up for Wisden by Tony Cozier: "The morale and reputation of English cricket has seldom been as severely bruised as it was during the 1988 Cornhill Insurance Test series against West Indies".

[10] During the match against Gloucestershire at Bristol, immediately after the ODI series, Phil Simmons suffered a horrific injury, receiving a ball to the head from bowler David Lawrence.

With the West Indies focus on restricting Gatting, Gooch was able to progress relatively unhindered but was dismissed for 43 by Ambrose, caught by Harper, and England were 119 for two.

Gatting, partnered by Pringle, made his fifty, and guided England to the total required with two overs to spare, winning the match by six wickets.

When Gatting was caught by Richards off Marshall's bowling, England were 64 for two, Lynch, Lamb and Gooch all failed to make an impression as their team collapsed to 83 for five.

The match was disrupted several times by rain: a single ball was bowled by England, who had won the toss and elected to field, before the first weather delay of the day curtailed play.

A first-wicket partnership of 40 between Greenidge and Haynes was followed by poor innings from Richardson, Logie and Richards, whose wicket fell after making 13 runs from 46 deliveries, with the West Indies on 95 for five.

[40][41] The following morning, Marshall and Dujon took the attack to England and scored 53 runs in the final overs, ending the West Indies innings on 178 for seven.

[48] During the previous winter, Gatting had been involved in an on-field altercation with umpire Shakoor Rana in Pakistan that snowballed into a diplomatic disaster with the third day of the second Test in Faisalabad being abandoned and accusations of cheating.

England began the Test with "an inspirational morning session" of fast bowling from Dilley, who took four of the first five wickets to fall to reduce the West Indies to 54/5.

[55] On day three, the touring batsmen completely dominated England's bowlers, adding a further 334 runs, including a century from Greenidge and fifties from Richards and Logie.

Most media attention however was focused on Broad, who was also dropped, "ostensibly for his consistent failure to make runs in home Tests, but there was always a suspicion that he was being disciplined for the incident at Lord's when he was spotted by a television camera mouthing his disappointment at an lbw decision".

England were "unable to cope for any length of time with the West Indian fast bowlers" and never gave even a sign of competing in a one-sided affair.

[70] As well as Cowdrey replacing Emburey, Gatting asked not to be considered for selection and the selectors also dropped Downton, Moxon, Capel, Defreitas and Childs in favour of Pringle, Neil Foster, Athey, Jack Richards, Tim Curtis and Robin Smith, with the last two set to make their Test debuts.

But the Yorkshire club insisted that all drains were functioning properly by the start of the match and put the cause of the trouble on the volume of overnight rain.

Logie was then caught by Foster off a slower ball from Pringle, before rain curtailed the day's play with the West Indies on 156 for five, 45 runs behind England.

[78] Just 26 minutes into day five, the West Indies made their target without loss, winning the match by ten wickets and taking an unassailable 3–0 lead in the series into the fifth and final Test.

Cowdrey suggested the defeat was in part directly as a result of the loss of Lamb mid-partnership with Smith: "you need partnerships to put pressure on [the West Indian bowlers], for as soon as you lose a wicket, they raise their game".

In reply, the West Indies made an unbeaten start, with Greenidge making a half-century and his side ended the day on 71 without loss, requiring 154 runs for victory.

[83] After a rest day, the West Indies resumed their run chase and a first-wicket partnership of 131 came to an end when Greenidge was out for 77, caught behind off Childs' bowling.

"[96] The 1991 home series, yet again versus West Indies, was a hard-fought 2–2 draw,[93] and, in one-day cricket, England reached the World Cup final for the second successive time the following winter, losing to Pakistan.

So effectively, at times irresistibly, did Vivian Richards's West Indian side play in the first three Test matches in Australia that by the New Year they had already retained the Frank Worrell Trophy.