Dillon Pennington roars back for Worcestershire as 18 wickets fall at Oakham

One can understand bowlers flinching a little at the prospect of playing cricket in a town where pies are not so much a speciality as an obsession. Oakham is only ten miles away from Melton Mowbray, after all, and spectators at this game who were tempted by the aroma from Piglets' Pantry would have found steak and ale, chicken gammon and leek, and chicken balti, all stuffed under a thick crust that mocked thoughts of healthy eating. As things turned out, however, it was the bowlers who gorged themselves, almost all of them feeding greedily on a pitch that rewarded the ancient disciplines.

It was a day on which even top-order, top-dollar cricketers could return to the pavilion after being dismissed and think themselves poorly used. They had played blameless forward defensive strokes to deliveries that required such careful treatment only to find the ball spitting away and taking the edge or jagging back and plucking out a stump. Seen in that context, Worcestershire's opening stand of 48 between Jake Libby and Gareth Roderick and their last-wicket partnership of 33 between Adam Finch and Dillon Pennington were major contributions. Between those alliances Azhar Ali's 34 was the innings of the day and his side's total of 178 was somewhere near par. When Leicestershire batted, they could make little of Finch, Pennington and Matthew Waite and were eight down for 88 at the close. Unless we have rain, it seems clear there will be no cricket here on Saturday.

And days such as this seem to concentrate spectators' attention. Aware that every run matters greatly, they devote themselves to the particular intensity of a brief match, especially so, perhaps, when it takes place in a part of the kingdom that few people seem to know well and on a day when the world's gaze is elsewhere. For Oakham is deep England; rich, dark-earthed farming country in Rutland, a county that many people outside its borders would struggle to locate. The locals sink their pints of Everards in The Wheatsheaf and the All Saints' campanologists rang on throughout Tuesday evening, quite oblivious to the fact of their drowning out Stephen Hough's performance at the Proms.

Even the names of the ends at the Doncaster Close ground seem to have been forgotten since 1935 when the cracks of Kent were the first to visit this ground and were beaten by ten wickets. "Sports Hall" and "Nursery" insist some modernists but given a rich choice, we settled for "Allotment" and "All Saints" because they reminded us of timeless nourishment of one sort or another. Drought-stressed leaves fell from trees, which was ironic given the rain that Oakham's head groundsman, Richard Dexter, has had to cope with when preparing the pitch for this match.

The first hour's play was all watchfulness. The Leicestershire bowlers stuck to their lines, and Worcestershire's openers responded with little more than occasional pushes into gaps. Then Tom Scriven came on from the Allotment End and sprayed his first delivery down the leg side. Four wides. Then there was a delivery miles outside off before Scriven's sixth ball surprised Libby with its accuracy and tempted him to nibble a catch to Peter Handscomb behind the stumps. It is so often the way. As though obeying some secret lore, a spinner bowled the over before lunch but Callum Parkinson made no breakthrough and Worcestershire came in prosperously placed with 74 for 1 on the board.

Ah, but grievous penury lay in wait for them. Wiaan Mulder's second ball after the resumption swung away from Roderick who snicked it to Handscomb. Mulder's next delivery compelled a defensive shot from Jack Haynes, who also edged to the keeper. In the following over a straight one from Wright had Adam Hose leg before for 5 and the visitors had lost three wickets for five runs in ten balls.

Respectability, threadbare as it was, was achieved through the efforts of Azhar, who continued to play the ball as little as possible and late when he did so. While three batsmen, Brett D'Oliveira, Waite and Joe Leach, all fell to slip catches by Ackermann, Azhar accumulated runs as if doing so in a gradual fashion pleased him somehow. He had made 34 in 153 minutes before his first misjudgement, a grope at a ball from Matt Salisbury, was his last. Mulder dived to his right from first slip to take the catch.

Other games were taking place and some notice was taken of them. News came through that Stuart Broad had dismissed Usman Khawaja at Old Trafford and folk recalled that Broad had taken his first Championship wicket at Oakham, his old school, in 2005, dismissing Somerset's Mike Burns in the first innings of the game and then repeating the trick in the second dig. No doubt the boyish joy was as great in Manchester as it was on this field some 18 summers and a thousand years ago.

There was plenty of delight in the evening session here but it brought little comfort to the locals. A blameless Rishi Patel nicked Pennington to Roderick in the fourth over of the innings but half of the eight home batters to be dismissed were bowled, either by balls that straightened or by ones that jagged back. Mulder looked relatively comfortable in making 21 before becoming Leach's only victim and he can look back on his day with some pride. And if Leicestershire supporters need a little encouragement to take into tomorrow, it was provided by Rehan Ahmed, who ended the day unbeaten on 25 off 39 balls and batted as if he wondered what the fuss was about.