Joe Leach says Worcestershire will be looking to manouvere themselves into a position where Moeen Ali can have a key role to play with the ball in the latter stages of the Specsavers County Championship match at Northampton.
Club Captain Leach will resume alongside Moeen at the crease on day three with Worcestershire looking to initially recover from 42-4.
But Leach said the eventual goal will be to try and set the home side a target of around 150 on a worn pitch which they hope England spinner Moeen can exploit.
Leach told BBC Hereford-Worcester’s Dave Bradley: “Unfortunately we’ve strung two bad days together so we’ve given ourselves a big uphill task for the rest of the game.
“But it is one we’ve got to be prepared to try and take on tomorrow.
“It is a good wicket to bat on now, I think that would be fair to say, but having said that I thought Ben Sanderson’s spell was exceptional.
“It was a tough period for our boys and we’ve just got to keep looking to improve and learn from these experiences and hope in the future they stand us in good stead.
“That being said, there is still a lot of batting left to come, we bat all the way down and we’re going to have to try our best to get close to what they got in their first innings.
“If we can do that and give them a target, in that fourth innings, the ball is starting to grip a little bit for the spinner and we’ve got an international caliber one (Moeen Ali).
“We’ve just got to give ourselves a chance going into that fourth innings.”
Leach added: “We batted first yesterday knowing that it was likely to do a bit with the weather we’ve had but also this is a used wicket.
“It’s had a lot of cricket on it before this game.
“We’ve just got ourselves into a position where Mo is a factor in the fourth innings as well as potentially uneven bounce and all those kind of things that can cause havoc at the back end of four-day games.
“We’ve got to earn the right to get there first and foremost but, if we do that, and set them 150 in the final innings, who knows what could happen.”
