[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Day Four

Morning: Any realistic hope of repeating our last-day heroics against Notts were thoroughly scuppered in a first session that saw the Pears, having resumed on 50-2, promptly collapse from 65-2 to 71-6.

Afternoon: Despite the best efforts of Ross Whiteley who added a quickfire 39, the visitors continued to take regular wickets, and by the stroke of two o'clock the Pears were 165-9 and looking at a defeat of nearly 300 runs. However, at that point Steve Magoffin joined debutant Alex Milton in the middle, and the two proceeded to occupy the crease for the next two and a half hours in a stand that lasted nearly forty overs and rewrote the history books. The record tenth-wicket partnership for Worcestershire in first-class cricket had, until today, been the 119 put on by William Burns and George Alfred Wilson against Somerset at New Road on 13th July 1906, but after standing for a hundred and twelve years and twelve days, Milton and Magoffin finally set a new best with an effortless 136; the county's first new partnership record in the first-class game for a decade. In the process, Milton made a classy and unbeaten century to boot, becoming only the second Englishman to do so for Worcestershire on his Championship debut after George Fiddian-Green in 1931.

Evening: Of course, all good things must eventually end with an ungainly slice to backward point, and that was precisely the demise of Magoffin and Worcestershire after a truly remarkable day's cricket.

Worcestershire LOSE by a hundred and forty-one runs

The Verdict: For the second Championship match in a row, Worcs made the utterly ludicrous decision to put the opposition in to bat first on a hot, sunny day, and unlike Notts, Somerset punished us. Perhaps we'd have made a pig's ear of it anyway, but we simply can't afford to shoot ourselves in the foot like this when we're already the underdogs in the division. Nevertheless, it was fantastic to see Milton and Magoffin make history on the final day even in a losing cause, and for Alex Milton in particular, there can be no better start to Championship cricket than to write your name in the county's history books, perhaps to remain there a century or more.

For Worcestershire, now on a three-game losing streak in all formats after an excellent eight-week spell over midsummer, we have to look to bounce back in the T20 Blast against Northants on Friday night.