Worcestershire Bowling Coach-Assistant Coach Alan Richardson gave his reaction at the end of day one of the Specsavers County Championship match with Northamptonshire at Wantage Road.
The visitors recovered from 58-7 to reach 186 all out thanks to the efforts of Joe Leach, Wayne Parnell, Josh Tongue and Ed Barnard.
Parnell then picked up two wickets – a deserved reward for a post tea spell – and Moeen Ali also showed encouraging signs with the ball as the day developed as Northamptonshire closed on 140-3.
Richardson told BBC Hereford-Worcester’s Dave Bradley: “Most definitely Northamptonshire’s day and certainly not the position we wanted to be in at the start of the day.
“Full credit to Northants. They bowled really well and then backed it up with the bat.
“Certainly Brett Hutton and Ben Sanderson bowled really well with the new ball. They bowled some really testing and challenging lengths for our batsmen and created some chances which they took.
“It was an impressive first session from them as a bowling group.
“The toss and the pitch? There are a couple of demons in there but nothing to worry us too much. It looked quite dry and is only going to get a little bit worse with hopefully a little bit of uneven bounce.
“We have Mo in the side as well and it was a used wicket. We thought it would be a little bit of a challenge this morning and hoped we would get through that and then make hay after that but we didn’t quite get through that (session).
“We take great pride in being able to bat all the way down and Ed and Wayne played really well and took a little bit of sting out of the Northants effort and then Joe and Josh added some useful runs at the end.
“Just pre and post tea we didn’t bowl as well as we could do and let them get away a little bit and Alex Wakely and Rob Keogh played really well with a lot of intent in their footwork.
“Mo started slowly by his own admission and struggled a bit to bowl into a gusty wind and he hasn’t bowled much in matches recently.
“But he certainly got better and in that last hour we showed what we could do. Wayne Parnell bowled superbly and we need to back that up again tomorrow morning.”
