[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

County Championship, Division One

vs Lancashire

Day One

Morning: Worcestershire won a contested toss and elected to bat on a cool, overcast morning in Southport. Runs on the board on a likely-to-deteriorate out-ground pitch was clearly the plan, but it remained a questionable decision for a good part of the day as wickets tumbled. Both Tom Fell - steadily regaining form since being promoted to opener - and Joe Clarke provided useful knocks before departing, but it was Dolly who supplied comfortably his best innings of the season, having dropped himself down to the middle-order, battling to get the Pears through to lunch on 98-4.

Afternoon: As the skies brightened, Lancs continued to chip away with disciplined bowling on a pitch offering movement, and when Dolly was caught at first slip for an excellent 65 it was up to the tail to push the visitors up to a respectable score. Ed Barnard dug in to act as the anchor as Worcs reached 199-8 at tea.

Evening: With a few classy shots from Josh Tongue, Worcestershire earned a much-needed batting point and clawed their way up to 220 before being bowled out; a score that put pressure on the bowling attack to perform from the word go. Fortunately they did just that, with young Tongue again the hero as he struck twice in his first over to remove Haseeb Hameed and Rob Jones for a duck apiece, leaving the home side 4-2. Steven Croft followed shortly thereafter, with Wayne Parnell performing his now-habitual trick of taking a wicket right at the end of a sustained spell of god-awful bowling, but from there Lancashire counter-attacked with a strong fourth-wicket partnership. It required a moment of supreme good fortune for Tongue to deflect a straight drive onto the non-striker's stumps and thus run out Dane Vilas, before supplying two in a single over for the second time in the session by removing Alex Davies LBW just two balls later. There was no further excitement as Lancs closed on 96-5 with honours more or less even, though Worcestershire perhaps shaded the day with the two late wickets. Jordan Clark will be the prize scalp to take in the morning, as Lancashire will come out knowing that one good partnership in this cat-and-mouse game will wrest the momentum right back in their favour.