McGrath the difference as Gloucestershire sinks

Another (overcast) day, another spectacular clatter of wickets at New Road. Even allowing for the intervention of further showers, fourteen more figures perished today as Worcestershire and Gloucestershire's 'batsmen' did their best to outdo one another in seeing just how rapidly they could fritter their innings away. As it was, though, the former lost the battle for mediocrity and their team now holds an overall lead of 229 runs with one more second innings scalp in tact.

Again it seemed that the batting calamities were no fault of the pitch alone: a view certainly shared by ECB pitch liaison officer Phil Sharpe, who will not be initiating action against the club on account of the quality or otherwise of the surface. For however lopsided the contest between bat and ball has become in this match, it was indeed more the combination of some fine bowling and some equally poor strokeplay that was responsible. There was a suggestion too that the dull, bleak conditions in which the day's play began also loomed large; a state of affairs about which Glenn McGrath was hardly complaining. He used the bowler-friendly weather to rise to his destructive best and captured all but three wickets in the course of a demolition job that saw Gloucestershire slide horrendously to 87. Believeable or not after their own ineptitude of the day before, the locals had somehow seized a first innings lead of eleven runs in the process. McGrath's rival Australian, Ian Harvey, admirably tried to stop the rot with a plucky 27 - the highest score mustered by anyone in the match until then - but even his ability to occasionally pierce a tightly set attacking field became akin to an exercise in trying to pile up sandbags in the face of a tidal wave.

McGrath was methodical, hostile and relentless. It is difficult to comprehend the notion that he hasn't taken a five wicket haul on this ground at any stage previously in the Championship season but then that has probably had as much to do as anything with the loss of substantial portions of a number of games to poor weather. In any case, his 7/29 here - the third best figures of his brilliant first class career - redressed the situation eloquently.

It did not take long for the Gloucestershire seamers to begin returning the compliment even if their inability to make the ball lift off the pitch as easily as McGrath allowed Worcestershire's top and middle order slightly more respite. Harvey (5/95) followed up with five wickets of his own on the back of his trademark variations of pace. But Vikram Solanki found a method of countering the apparent impossibility of occupying the crease for long enough to make a productive contribution - by crashing his way to 41 off only thirty-two deliveries - and the home team's lead was soon billowing beyond the positively gigantic figure of one hundred. Solanki's effort suddenly made batting look easier, and David Leatherdale (56), Steve Rhodes (50*) and Paul Pollard (20) all profited handsomely from being shown the value of positive thinking.