[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Day Two

Morning: A cloudy Friday to see out April, and resuming on 266-2, Essex managed to bring up their third batting point in the 110th over while forcing the Pears to go pointless for their bowling efforts. However, Tom Westley tried to up the scoring rate after reaching three figures, and thus went to slog-sweep the very first delivery off stand-in skipper Jake Libby only to top-edge the ball high for a steepling catch to the keeper for 113. Nevertheless, that was the only breakthrough of the session, and Essex progressed to 368-3 at lunch.

Afternoon: More hard toil in the field, and Dillon Pennington got a deserved reward for his efforts when he struck the back pad of Dan Lawrence, dismissing the England man LBW for 90. Tight bowling kept boundaries to a minimum, and forced the Essex batsmen to take risks as they hit out before the inevitable declaration.

Evening: Paul Walter was the first casualty of the Essex charge, cutting Daryl Mitchell to short third man for 65; Ryan ten Doeschate then survived a stumping only to be sent packing LBW for 41 off the very next ball from Brett D'Oliveira, who then dismissed Adam Wheater for 23 in the same fashion and bowled Shane Snater for 1. The declaration came on 561-8, which very much rules out a first win of the season for Worcestershire this weekend; however, Mitch and Libby successfully saw off the new ball attack as they navigated the last sixteen overs of the day and guided the Pears to 37-0 at stumps, raising hopes that the draw is very much on. They'll need to carry on as they began, hope that the pitch doesn't deteriorate and that Simon Harmer doesn't make the old ball talk, and just run the hours down over the next two days.