Leicestershire caught cold on resumption

Worcestershire 216 for 8 (Anurag 74, Leatherdale 62) beat Leicestershire 141 by 75 runs

Anurag Singh: important 74, despite hamstring injury

After enjoying the upper hand for much of yesterday's play, Leicestershire were caught cold on the resumption of their rain-interrupted quarter-final at Grace Road, as Mark Harrity and Matt Mason took three wickets each on a slow seamer. Leicestershire resumed on their overnight 5 for 0, but immediately lost Virender Sehwag for 2 and never recovered. They stumbled to 60 for 6 in pursuit of Worcestershire's 216 for 8, and only a desperate rearguard from Phil DeFreitas and Charlie Dagnall enabled them to reach the relative prosperity of 141.

Sehwag was trapped lbw by Mason off the very first ball of the day, and though Darren Stevens crashed his way to 34 from 26 balls, the game was sealed when five wickets fell for 12 runs, including Stevens and the dangerous Darren Maddy in consecutive deliveries from Andrew Hall. It was sweet revenge for Hall, who had himself been dismissed first-ball by Maddy in yesterday's play.

Going into the match, Worcestershire had been deprived of three key players in Graeme Hick, Stephen Peters and Nantie Hayward, and their own innings had never really got going. They seemed destined for a heavy defeat when Maddy picked up three wickets in an over, including his former Leicestershire colleague, Ben Smith, for a duck, but Anurag Singh and David Leatherdale knuckled down and ground out a competitive total.

Singh defied a hamstring injury to make a gritty 74, and Leatherdale followed his matchwinning 80 against Yorkshire in the previous round with a well-paced 62. They added 111 for the fifth wicket, but until the rainclouds rolled across the ground towards the end of the day, it scarcely seemed enough.

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