Worcestershire Head Coach, Alan Richardson, gave his reaction after the three-day defeat against champions and current leaders Surrey at the Kia Oval.
Richardson said: “It was a very tough game against a very good side. We had a couple of windows of opportunity, especially during the first day when we could have been slightly ahead of the game or on parity.
“But Surrey made sure that didn’t happen and made day two an incredibly tough day for us. One that the guys will learn from and shouldn’t be disheartened.
“The boys in there are competitors and they want to win games of cricket and get very disappointed when they lose.
“This one was a real tough game and the second day made it very difficult for us to get any stranglehold in it.
“One of the reasons Surrey are so good is that they make sure windows of opportunity against them don’t happen very often and, if you don’t take them, then they punish you.
“An example of that would be when we had them 15-4 and Dan Lawrence and Ollie Pope then play very well and put on 140 plus which gets them to a competitive score on a wicket on the first day which was very bowler-friendly.
“Joe Leach and Nathan Smith started brilliantly well and you think there is an opportunity to make real headway and they made sure that didn’t happen.
“When we batted, Waitey (Matthew Waite) and Dolly (Brett D’Oliveira) played really well and unfortunately we lost Waitey and Nathan right at the end of the first day.
“If we had gone into the second day 111-5 instead of 111-7, we would have hopefully got close to parity and hopefully another opportunity may have arisen.
“Again in their second innings, if we had held onto Dan Lawrence they would have been 200 ahead, five wickets down, and you never know what would have happen from there.
“We should take great heart from the fact we had those opportunities but also there is a lot of learning to be done and the boys in the changing room will be frustrated and disappointed.
“If one of their bowlers gets 10 wickets for 50 odd runs it makes it very difficult to win a game of cricket from there and Dan Worrall showed what a class performer he is on what was a helpful surface.
“The bowlers should take a lot of heart still. They played against some very good players. For Yadvinder, great experience to take four wickets on a Test ground.
“Matthew Waite with the ball for the last three games has been exceptional and deserves the rewards he is getting and Ben Gibbon on day two bowled 22 overs and got better and better.
“We can’t fault the effort and the passion that the boys show.
“We know it’s not our best performance of the season by a long while but Surrey made it really hard for us.
“It’s not an excuse but we came off a big game against Kent last week where we spent over 200 overs in the field and we were probably a little bit leggy throughout this game.
“One performance doesn’t define our season but we will learn from playing these good sides.”
