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Day Four

Morning: With conditions still ostensibly batting-friendly, Durham continued to make hay until Adam Finch added to his solid tally for the match by having David Bedingham caught for 86 on the pull, while Ollie Robinson holed out for 13 to Ben Gibbon, giving the left-armer his sixth scalp of the weekend and career-best match figures. On 254-4 the hosts declared, setting a fair target of 314 from seventy overs to win, but when Jake Libby was caught at first slip for a duck to leave the Pears 3-1 at lunch, it was a omen of things to come.

Afternoon: Almost immediately after the resumption, an attempted drive by Ed Pollock off Paul Coughlin spooned the ball up to mid-on for 2, reducing Worcs to 3-2, and though Azhar Ali and Jack Haynes combined to good effect for the bulk of the session, both fell trying to sweep Matthew Kuhnemann for 33 and 40 respectively, caught by diving catches in the deep. As the abortive chase rapidly subsided, there was still time for Gareth Roderick to be comprehensively bowled by Kuhnemann for 2 before tea.

Evening: Spells of intermittent resistance simply weren't enough, as Matthew Waite perished LBW for 21 to Coughlin before Joe Leach was bowled for a duck by a sharply-turning delivery from Kuhnemann. A titanic rearguard effort from Dolly ended when the skipper edged Potts behind for 42, and Gibbon copped a golden duck in the same fashion off the following delivery. It was down to the last-wicket partnership of Dillon Pennington and Adam Finch to see out the last nineteen overs, and agonisingly, the pair came within thirty-two deliveries of getting the job done before the former was bowled by Kuhnemann for 14.

Worcestershire LOSE by one hundred and twenty-one runs

The Verdict: From a Worcestershire perspective, it's a matter of philosophy whether this result is the unfortunate consequence of an admirable gamble that produced a thrilling day's cricket, or a stroke of idiocy that threw away an almost-guaranteed draw, however boring to watch, for a hapless car-crash defeat. For my money, I'm inclined to take a balanced view that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the Saturday declaration, and it is the kind of sporting gesture which benefits cricket, while feeling that the way in which Worcestershire approached the eventual run chase was a catastrophe from the word go, with too many top-order players throwing their wicket away and duly exposing a lengthy tail to hours of hostile bowling. The outcome, like it or not, is that five points have been sacrificed and an extra eleven granted to the opposition, making for a 16-point differential with a potential promotion rival. If these gambles are going to become the norm for us when hunting for wins, we absolutely have to improve the way we chase a stiff target against the clock.