It was the segment of play immediately after tea - in which Bravo picked up two more wickets - that gave West Indies the greatest hope.
BBC: Australia cling on to draw with West Indies in Adelaide
Any result other than a win in the penultimate match in Bridgetown will give West Indies the series - and complete a miserable winter's work for Strauss's men.
England must now beat India on Sunday, and West Indies the following day, but even two positive results would not necessarily be enough to put the hosts into the semi-finals.
Over the course of the next few years England did more than that, beating Zimbabwe and West Indies the following summer - a springboard to a remarkable winter in 2000-01, when both Pakistan and Sri Lanka were put to the sword.
The West Indies Cricket Board and the West Indies Players Association had been at loggerheads over players' contracts, payments and image rights.
England sealed their second whitewash of the summer with a 10-wicket win over the West Indies at The Oval.
BBC: SPORT | Cricket | Eng v W Indies | Vaughan applauds England
Meanwhile, the West Indies thrashed the Netherlands by 215 runs at the 2011 World Cup in New Delhi on Monday.
He will take charge of the West Indies for the home series against Zimbabwe, which begins at the end of the month.
England play the West Indies at The Oval on Monday and the winner of that game will join the Proteas in qualifying for the last four.
They would have been disappointed with the series loss in the West Indies but the only way to right the wrongs is to put some good performances on the board.
The England players now have time to rest and regroup before embarking on a tour to the West Indies in the New Year, the squad to be named on 29 December.
There will be last hurrahs from two great West Indian fast bowlers, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, though neither they nor Lara seem likely to do enough to propel the West Indies into the final.
England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke said he had no intention of releasing players to accommodate the 2009 IPL tournament as England were scheduled to tour the West Indies at the same time.
The recalculation of the West Indies target the previous day from an imposing 192 from 20 overs to just 60 from six with all their wickets in hand was not the best advert for the system, which appears to need a reassessment for Twenty20 cricket.
We did really well in the field against both West Indies and the eventual winners England.
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England had dominated the morning session after West Indies won the toss and elected to bat at Sabina Park.
But Collingwood insists he can inject a new sense of belief in the side ahead of the first Twenty20 match against West Indies at the Oval.
But the real body blow for West Indies was the loss of Nash, whose four-and-a-quarter-hour innings ended disappointingly when he offered no stroke to a ball from Bollinger and lost his off stump.
BBC: Australia on brink of victory over West Indies in Perth
Patel is not in the Test squad, so is not required by his country for the two Tests at home to West Indies in the first half of May.
McGrath enjoyed similar success against the West Indies earlier in the year when he mastered Brain Lara.
Their cause is clearly helped by the fact neither England nor the West Indies will contest the final since umpires have to be neutral.
England chopped and changed their bowlers looking to finish the West Indies off but the tourists dug in with a 82-run fifth wicket partnership between Dwayne Bravo and Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
They defied the West Indies attack through the morning session with Ambrose lofting Sulieman Benn for six and collecting 20 fours before a leading edge off Simmons saw him depart to the final ball before lunch.
Croft arrived to accompany the West Indies international into the afternoon session, but when he chopped left-arm spinner Briggs onto his stumps and Gareth Cross was caught behind off the same bowler, seemingly only Chanderpaul stood in Hampshire's way.
That might be so, but the euphoria the Stanford tournaments brought to Caribbean cricket supporters has not been felt for many years, not since the heady days when the West Indies teams dominated the game in the 1970s and 80s.
Leading into the Ashes, these two Tests against the West Indies might give the selectors a snapshot of the future, but I would be amazed if Steve Harmison's name isn't pencilled into the teamsheet for the first Test in Cardiff in a few months time.
England will be appearing in their first global final since the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy, where they were beaten by West Indies at The Oval.
With only one hour's play available before lunch at the regular time of 1300 BST, it looked like Devon Smith and Lendl Simmons might get West Indies to the interval without England adding to the two wickets they had lost overnight.
The territory, once called the Dutch West Indies, became the semi-autonomous Netherlands Antilles in 1954.
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