For all the morbid pre-season predictions and their southerly league position, promoted Worcestershire simply do not look like one of the worst two sides in Division One. Their bowling looks pedestrian but they are supremely drilled and seldom allow batsmen to leave the ball, harrying them into action. Here their busy, bustling batting was of the same spirit.
After light rain caused a late start and the loss of 16 overs Joe Leach docked Middlesex’s tail efficiently and Moeen Ali and Tom Fell scored fine half-centuries to leave them only 114 behind.
Leach, one of an unglamorous, often ungainly but always efficient seam trio, alongside Charlie Morris and Jack Shantry, had James Harris plumb in front with a ball that stayed low, then Toby Roland-Jones caught at slip next ball.
With the bulging cordon baying, Tim Murtagh knocked the hat-trick ball into the covers for a single. But Ollie Rayner was on his way in Leach’s next over, unimpressed to be dismissed leg-before.
Middlesex’s 309 looked good after five for two or 102 for five but not so considering the sixth wicket was worth 170. It is a show of Worcestershire’s bowling strength that they took all three bowling points for the 35th time in 36 matches.
The bowling coach, Matt Mason, who treats each element of his varied seam attack – the regimented Morris, the scuttling Leach and the downright awkward Shantry – utterly as individuals, deserves a huge amount of credit. Mason preaches probing with attacking maidens and not settling for bowling dry on a fifth-stump line.
To date, it has been Worcestershire’s batting that has betrayed them. Yet three partnerships – none vast, but each greater than the last – prevented another collapse. After Richard Oliver fell lbw in Harris’s first over, Daryl Mitchell – who scored three from his first 49 balls – and Ali were watchful. When Mitchell was caught at second slip, Moeen and Fell upped the pace, while the latter will look to build on his stand of 83 with Alex Gidman, with the new ball nine overs away. Fell was cautious early before unfurling some handsome drives and pulls and astutely taking advantage of the absence of a third man.
These are curious times for Moeen. One of England’s finest limited-overs players, he was an onlooker in this month’s wondrous one-day international series, banished to the shires in search of spin.
On Sunday he had cut a confused figure in the field, afforded only 12 overs as those seamers did the job again. On Monday he produced some strokes of aching elegance, such as the drive down the ground off Rayner, or the one uppishly through cover off James Franklin. Yet a lapse in concentration saw him give it away, leaden-footedly slapping Franklin to mid-off. Never mind, with the pitch expected to take turn and Shantry’s footmarks to aim at, the more important matter of soul-soothing wickets could yet be there for the taking.
