[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

vs Lancashire

One-Day Cup, Northern Group

Old Trafford, Manchester

Always a tough road trip, Worcestershire visit Old Trafford today with Lancashire on their last throw of the dice, needing to win every remaining game to have a hope of qualifying.  Meanwhile, the Pears will be hoping to reclaim top spot in the group.

Lancs innings: Lancashire won the toss and elected to bat on a warm and sunny morning.  A great first half of the innings for the Pears had Lancashire on the ropes with just 153 for 5, including an extraordinary spell of bowling from Dolly who saw out his ten overs without conceding a single boundary, finishing with figures of 1-32.  However, it all fell apart from there as Jordan Clark and Dane Vilas proved unbeatable and uncontainable at the crease, chalking up Lancashire's highest-ever sixth-wicket partnership against Worcestershire in List A cricket, taking the Red Rose County to a solid score of 313-5 off the fifty with a century for Vilas.  I said before this game that I think we're due a defeat, and heads are certainly going to be down after those last ten overs or so.  It's a good pitch with a fast outfield, but the scoreboard pressure is going to be right on the Pears from the word go, and even with a deep batting line-up we'll need one or two players to really excel at the crease this afternoon.

Worcs innings: As I feared, getting tonked through the last ten overs of the Lancashire innings set heads a-spinning in the dressing room, and the Pears just never got going at the crease.  Jimmy Anderson and Kyle Jarvis made the new ball work for them from the word go, taking the early wickets of Moeen and Pepsi, and though Daryl Mitchell and Joe Clarke put a decent half-hour's partnership together, Mitchell then lobbed an easy catch to Brown and precipitated a middle-order collapse just as a recovery was starting to look possible.  The four wickets that fell to Jordan Clark effectively ended the game as a serious contest, though John Hastings did his best to make the score halfway respectable, finishing on 30 not out as the Pears were skittled for 161.  Worcestershire well beaten in the end, and worse still, it's the kind of emphatic defeat which last year tended to send the side into a prolonged slump.  With three matches still to play in this group stage and the table growing ever-tighter, Joe Leach now faces the first significant challenge of his captaincy, as he'll need to lift the team's confidence again and make sure they don't blow qualification altogether.

Worcestershire LOSE by a hundred and fifty-two runs

Star Performer: Frankly, no one comes out of this one looking shit-hot with a bat in their hand (though Joe Clarke was unlucky to be dismissed by a Jimmy Anderson wonder catch and John Hastings biffed a few big sixes when the game was gone).  On the bowling front those last ten overs proved an embarrassment to the Worcestershire attack, and so it's really only Brett D'Oliveira who emerges with credit from the Lancashire innings, having bowled himself out before the fortieth with a hugely impressive 1-32 and not conceding a single boundary.  Sadly, the Pears are left scratching their heads and wondering how it all went wrong from there.

Next Match: The first Bears-Pears derby of the season comes on Friday, and it's going to be huge as Worcestershire look to bounce back against their arch-rivals.