- Updates from around the County Championship grounds
- Day three roundup: Bess fires Yorkshire to heavy win
- Get in touch! Email Tanya with any thoughts
Yorkshire’s whopping 504-run victory over Worcestershire gave Jonny Bairstow early-season bounce to his boots. Bairstow had declined to enforce the follow-on on Saturday, and batted on, and on, to set Worcestershire an implausible 610 for victory. Dom Bess collected his first Championship century, off just 115 balls, while Dawid Malan biffed an unbeaten 76 and Bairstow an unbeaten 44 – both pole-axing three sixes. Worcestershire’s fielders largely patrolled the boundary. A brow-beaten Worcestershire were then unzipped for 105 to become the first side in County Championship history to lose a match by 500 runs or more.
At Old Trafford, Lancashire, who swapped divisions with Yorkshire at the end of last season, were having a trying day against Northamptonshire. After a hard-fought morning, they lost three wickets in 19 balls just before lunch, one of them the steadfast Keaton Jennings, caught magnificently by Saif Zaib at midwicket, the third player in the match to get out in the 90s. Lancashire were soon following on in the chill of an April wind. Jennings once more strode out, this time making 49, and for the second evening in a row Anderson Phillip found himself drafted in as nightwatchman – he survived.
