A CRUCIAL partnership between Ben Smith and David Leatherdale helped give Worcestershire the edge in their 21-runs victory over Es-sex in yesterday's Cheltenham & Glou-cester Trophy quarter-final at New Road.

After winning the toss, the County slipped alarmingly to 75-5 before man-of-the-match Smith and Leatherdale added a vital 76 in 14 overs.

It enabled their side to reach 204 which, in the end, proved too challenging for Essex who were dismissed for 183 with 11 balls to spare.

Delighted captain Smith said: "It was a little bit tougher up front than I thought on that pitch. I didn't think it was going to do quite as much as it did, but we managed to get a couple of decent partnerships going in the middle and the end of innings and get a respectable total.

"When myself and Leather-dale got together there was a lot of overs left to chew up and we needed to make sure we spent as much time as we could out in the middle to accumulate a decent score.

"We've seen teams fall for lesser totals at New Road before and I think what really helped was Andy Bichel being outstanding with the new ball along with Matt Mason early on.

"They set the tone and our fielding I thought was pretty much up with how we can field as a team. But we had to really scrap and we were prepared to get our heads down and do it as a team as we did."

Essex skipper Ronnie Irani accepted that the County were the better side on the day, saying: "Obviously we are hugely disappointed. It's a bitter pill to swallow as a captain to lose in the quarter-finals.

"But, to be fair to Worcester, I thought their middle to back order played exceptionally well. Our guys put up a bit of a fight, but Worcester were better than us on the day.

"Smith and Leatherdale used their experience and shovelled it around and played it nicely, but we never quite adapted ourselves well enough with the bat and we should probably have taken it a lot closer than we did."

After such an uncertain start to their innings, the County were not able to thank Smith and Leatherdale enough.

Battling Smith was eventually removed for 54, which included five fours off 72 balls, while Leatherdale fell shortly afterwards for 42 with one four off 55 deliveries.

Gareth Batty, Steve Rhodes and Kabir Ali also provided valuable runs to lift Worcestershire past the 200 mark -- a tally which had looked highly unlikely earlier in the Worcesterhire innings.

The major threat to the County's total came from Andy Flower who made 58 and James Middlebrook (47) who were both run out following excellent fielding by Batty and Kabir respectively.