Worcestershire beat Middlesex in opening game after barren 2009

Worcestershire, unable to win a match last summer in the Championship, registered their first victory of this season by 3.30pm today. They bowled out Middlesex for 169, giving them the comfortable winning margin of 111 runs. After the traumas of 2009 this was the ideal start to Worcestershire's 2010 campaign, albeit against a fragile batting line-up. Middlesex's chief tormentor was an old boy, Alan Richardson. The archetypal journeyman of county cricket reminded us why so many clubs have been ready to take up his services – Worcestershire is his fourth home. Richardson made full use of a green, pliant surface that by the third day was pockmarked by indentations. He took four wickets and led the attack with verve. Richardson is not the most elegant of pacemen with his earnest bow-legged approach and gangling open-chested action. But he takes his share of wickets. After 10 minutes he disposed of the England captain, who for the second time in the match, was disappointed to be confronted with Vanburn Holder's raised finger. On this occasion Andrew Strauss declined to play a shot and was given lbw. That wicket gave Worcestershire confidence that a rare victory was within their grasp. Dawid Malan was the solitary batsman to offer resistance in an elegant innings of 69 punctuated by 11 sweetly struck boundaries. No one was able stay with him for long. When a partnership did threaten between Malan and Adam London, Richardson, the fielder, intervened. Hurtling in from long-leg, his throw hit the stumps directly at the non-striker's end so that London was run out for the second time in the match. The Middlesex tail did not prolong proceedings. A bewildered Steve Finn was the last man out. It is not often that a bowler takes nine for 37 as Finn did on Saturday and ends up on the losing side. Afterwards Angus Fraser, Middlesex's director of cricket, was impressed by the way England's latest recruit had coped with the extra expectations that come with being an international bowler. "Finn's rhythm was as good as I've ever seen and he was as hostile as the end of his spells as he was at the beginning," Fraser said. He was not too bothered by Strauss's two failures. "He'll get runs, won't he?" It was a rhetorical question. Fraser acknowledged that the Middlesex thinktank may have made the wrong choice at the toss. "It was unanimous that we should bowl; it looked so green. But now that the heavy roller has been banned the indentations made on a soft pitch could not be ironed out as they would have been last year." Certainly the pitch deteriorated as the game progressed. Richardson, today, and the highly promising Richard Jones yesterday, took full advantage.