Worcestershire first-innings top scorer, Gareth Roderick, gave credit to the visitors bowling attack after his side had earlier been reduced to 86-7 on Day One of the Rothesay County Championship Division One match, before later leading a lower-order fightback with a dogged 61.
Roderick’s fourth red-ball half-century of the season helped dig his side out of a deep hole as he and Tom Taylor (40) put on 81 for the eighth wicket.
With former Pears seamers Josh Tongue and Dillon Pennington making life very difficult for the hosts, Roderick, shifted down the order to number six, dug in for 110 balls to steer his side out of serious peril and up to a reasonable score of 182, after it earlier had looked like 120 may not have been achievable.
Despite his hard work, Roderick said his side have to make some early breakthroughs on day two with an under-par first innings score to defend.
“Obviously you want to put a few more runs on the board than that. They bowled particularly well, and I thought the pitch was quite receptive in that first session. Whether it was the half 10 start, I don’t know, but just that first kind of hour was really tricky, and they bowled really well.
“I don’t think there was a lot of wickets given away. If I look back at some of the dismissals, I think they just bowled really well, and we weren’t able to combat that as well as we would have liked to.
“So we obviously wanted to put more on the board, but if we can strike early with a new ball tomorrow hopefully we can drag them back.”
After thunder and lightning had paused play for over two hours, the home side were presented with a chance late last night to make some inroads into the Outlaws top-order.
Division One’s leading wicket taker, Tom Taylor, needed just two deliveries to take the opening wicket of the innings, as he beat the defences of Haseeb Hameed to uproot his off-stump and give the Pears some vital momentum.
That was to be the only success of a busy last hour of the opening day however, with Notts navigating it through to the close without any further casualties, with Roderick emphasising the importance of the first hour on the second morning of the match.
“I think that’s why those first 16 overs tonight and then I think next 20 tomorrow morning are going to be really crucial.
“We need to hit our straps and hit the ground running. I think, like I said, the guys bowled really well earlier and beat the beat a lot, so we could have potentially had a few more there. So that’s the name of the game tomorrow [today].
“We’ve played enough cricket here to know that these games move fast at New Road and you can can get on a bit of a run with the ball, so that’s what we will look to look to do tomorrow.”
