Worcestershire beat bottom club Kent to ease fears

Kashif Ali went past 50 for the seventh time this season to see the Pears home at Worcester

Vitality County Championship, Division One, Visit Worcestershire New Road (day four)

Kent 171: Muyeye 56; Leach 6-52 & 376: Muyeye 211, Stewart 41; Taylor 4-90

Worcestershire 447: D'Oliveira 97, Roderick 63; Jordan 5-97 & 102-2: Kashif Ali 52*

Worcestershire (23 pts) beat Kent (3 pts) by 8 wickets

Match scorecard

Worcestershire secured their second successive County Championship Division One win as they overcame bottom club Kent by eight wickets.

Tom Taylor and Joe Leach picked up the final two Kent wickets as the visitors were bowled out for 376.

That left a modest victory target of 101 and, although Pears openers Gareth Roderick and Jake Libby fell cheaply, Kashif Ali hit an unberaten 52, backed by Rob Jones, who made 23 in an unbroken stand of 69.

Following on from victory in their previous game against Durham seven weeks ago, Worcestershire’s 23-point haul lifts them out of the bottom two to sixth, ahead of Midlands rivals Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire and Lancashire.

The Pears were in the ascendancy for the bulk of the game once Kent had collapsed from 73-0 in the first innings to lose their last 10 wickets for 98 runs.

It was two of their players returning from lengthy spells out through injury who made the most significant contributions.

Joe Leach, who is retiring at the end of the season, rolled back the years with a six-wicket haul in Kent’s first innings - his first appearance for three months after a recurrence of a knee problem.

Captain Brett D’Oliveira, who has been troubled by a shoulder injury, also returned after having extensive rehab, to hit a key 97 from 90 balls.

Tawanda Muyeye completed a brilliant maiden double century to frustrate Worcestershire’s hopes of a three-day win. But they still face a real uphill battle to maintain their top flight status after suffering their sixth defeat in 10 games.

Muyeye, crucially out in Saturday's final over, also hit a first-innings half century, along with his career best 211 for an overall match haul of 267 runs - and that was almost more than the rest of the Kent team.

Worcestershire now face a tough trip to Chelmsford to face Essex on Thursday, when Kent move on to Edgbaston to face winless Warwickshire. But, with Notts stil to face too, the southerners do at least still have their fate in their own hands if they are to retain the top flight status they won in 2018.

Report supplied by the ECB Reporters Network

Worcestershire head coach Alan Richardson told BBC Hereford & Worcester:

"The boys have worked incredibly hard over the last three and a half days and the performance deserved a victory. It was nice to get over line.

“Obviously Joe Leach will get the plaudits - and quite rightly so - but everyone contributed. With the bat, we chipped in all the way down and had some really valuable partnerships led by Dolly who played really well and gave us some rhythm.

“Tom Taylor missed the first chunk of seven games through injury so for him to be making the contributions he is making are vital. We knew when we signed him we were going to get a quality cricketer. He bowled beautifully throughout.

“Fair play to Kent. They made us work really hard in that third innings but we stuck at it and that’s what four-day cricket is all about."