Worcestershire were looking down the barrel in today's Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy quarter-final at New Road.

After 43 overs, the County were facing an uphill struggle at 163-6 as Essex continued to dominate.

Worcestershire, who won the toss and elected to bat, were on the back foot early on when they lost Stephen Peters and Andy Bichel cheaply with the score at 14-2.

Vikram Solanki (32) and Graeme Hick (14) led a recovery but wickets continued to fall and it was left to skipper Ben Smith to steady the ship.

Smith and David Leatherdale, who came to the wicket after the demise of Andrew Hall, put on 76 for the sixth wicket as Worcestershire began to get a foothold.

However, when Smith went for 54, the job of providing Essex with any sort of target was left to Leatherdale and Gareth Batty.

Worcs: SD Peters, VS Solanki, AJ Bichel, GA Hick, BF Smith, AJ Hall, DA Leatherdale, GJ Batty, Kabir Ali, SJ Rhodes, MS Mason.

Essex: WI Jefferson, A Flower, RC Irani, AN Cook, RS Bopara, JS Foster, JD Middlebrook, GR Mapier, D Gough, SA Brant, D Kaneria.

Umpires: P Hartley, A Whitehead.

The County went into the match on the back of a rallying call from skipper Smith, whose men lost by seven wickets in last season's one-side final against Gloucestershire at Lord's.

He said: "We regard this as being our competition after what happened last year. We owe a few people and should have done better. To lose a final is difficult in itself because you have generally done so well to get to that stage of the competition."

The County froze on the day when they slumped from 64-0 to 149 all out with Gloucestershire reaching their target with almost 30 overs to spare.

Smith said: "It would have been nice to have got 280 on the board and to lose to a fantastic innings in the penultimate over, at least that way you have done yourselves justice.

"But losing in the manner we did really spoilt the whole thing. From a great position it just slipped away and it was something we couldn't claw back.

"In modern cricket you can lose a game in no time at all; in a session or even in an hour in four-day cricket."

"The increased pace of the game has made that contribution and teams will now score at four or five runs an over even in the county championship.

"If there is any doubt or uncertainty over the pitch people tend not to try to hang around as they once did, but play more positively and aggressively."

That approach is something the County have attempted to address on all surfaces in limited-overs matches.