[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

County Championship, Division One

vs Essex

New Road, Worcester

After the encouraging draw at Somerset on the season's first weekend, weeks and weeks of being outclassed with bat and ball and sinking to consecutive defeats - sometimes from winning positions - left Worcestershire bottom of the table and staring at a seemingly inevitable relegation unless the shoddy form could be turned around.

Day One: Essex won the toss and put the Pears in to bat on a scorching Friday morning in a May gloriously full of them, and despite a slightly better start than the Worcestershire faithful have become accustomed to over the last miserable six weeks, the familiar clatter of top-order wickets left the hosts 58-3 by twenty past twelve. It required a solid rebuild from Kashif Ali and last-chance-salooner Rob Jones to reach lunch without further damage on 84-3 and then some way beyond. Even after losing his partner and then Brett D'Oliveira in quick succession, Jonesy kept going to make a valuable half-century before he too departed. At 192-7 the possibility of yet another under-par score from the Pears was high, but the determined wagging of tail-enders Tom Taylor (who made a swashbuckling 43) and half-centurion Matthew Waite helped bring Worcestershire the batting points which, like buses, came in a trio after none all season so far. 354-9 at close, with Ben Allison still having fun at the crease against his former club, it was Worcestershire's best day's work in a painfully long time.

Day Two: A cloudier Saturday saw Allison add just four to the overnight total before perishing, putting a solid 358 on the scoreboard. But that was far from the end of his fun, as with the second delivery of his new-ball spell he nipped one in to his own brother and removed off-stump for a duck, opening the door for Tom Taylor to claim a couple more top-order scalps, assisted by a stupendous one-handed diving catch inches off the ground by Ethan Brookes at third slip. 57-3 at lunch, the ball continued to misbehave through the afternoon, and Essex simply had no ability to make partnerships stick as they sank to 147-8 by tea, and any hopes of the tail wagging for them were ended quickly after the interval by Pingu mopping up the last couple of wickets, leaving the visitors 157 all out with a deficit of 201. But a bold decision from the Pears not to enforce the follow-on resulted in a final session of somewhat dispiriting mayhem, as the top order once again got bulldozed - only Kash offering significant resistance with a token 31 - and it fell to Jones to hold the innings together again, reaching stumps on 58-5 with a wobbly lead of 259.

Day Three: Early carnage in the Sunday morning sun reduced Worcestershire to 80-8, and with the lead standing at an all-too-assailable 281, it required a fightback from Brookes to lift it up beyond the magic 300, eventual setting Essex 336 to win as the Pears were bowled out for 134. Alarmingly, the visitors made a steady start to the chase for a full eleven overs, until Allison took the vital scalp of Dean Elgar to open the door which Pingu gladly charged through. Reducing Essex to 89-6 by tea, the result was already a foregone conclusion, but there was plenty of fun in the sun as Gareth Roderick equalled the county record for wicketkeeping catches in a match, and that man Matthew Waite wrapped up a near-perfect weekend with his first Championship five-fer and then career-best figures of 6-19, falling just one short of ten wickets in the match.

Worcestershire WIN by two hundred and twenty-five runs

The Verdict: A thumping and welcome victory which, by itself, doesn't quite budge the needle on Worcestershire's disastrous season so far; however, we can only hope that the momentum and self-belief it gives to the team will stand them in good stead to keep the results coming in the months ahead. The legend of Matthew Waite continues to grow around New Road, and though hefty question marks remain over our top-order batting, there were tentative signs from the likes of Kashif Ali, Ethan Brookes and Rob Jones that they don't intend to go gentle into that good night. More of the same all round, please.