[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Day Three

Morning: With just the second ball of the day, Ed Barnard took his eleventh wicket of the match to dismiss Somerset without adding to their overnight score, but sadly, that was as good as it got for the Pears on an awful Sunday. No less than six batsmen came and went before lunch as the ball zipped around and claimed one victim after another. Some of it was pure bad luck, such as a dubious LBW decision against Joe Clarke, but some of it was very, very poor shot selection in the circumstances.

Afternoon: The tail wagged a little for Worcestershire - enough to reduce the deficit to two figures - but sadly, not enough to save a game that was gone with the new ball.

Worcestershire LOSE by eighty-three runs

The Verdict: To look at the scorecard, the simple difference between the two teams was Somerset having two batsmen - Renshaw in the first innings, Hildreth in the second - who stuck at the crease for long enough in difficult conditions to cobble together a century. For the second weekend in a row the Pears top order has been blown away in both innings, and that bodes very, very ill for the season ahead. Add to that the fact that Hildreth was dropped no less than four times in the match, and it's clear where the problems lie. We can bemoan bad luck, and there was plenty of it this weekend, but a team who get the basics wrong will be punished for it.

The sole ray of light is the one-man cricket machine that is Ed Barnard, showing some serious Division One pedigree. The young man is currently flying high in the wicket-taking table for the division, being kept off top spot only by Jake Ball and Harry Gurney. If the rest of the team can up their game to his standard, there may yet be hope.