WELL, Worcestershire's batting has delivered in the first of the consecutive Frizzell County Championship Division Two crunch matches against top- of-the-table opposition.

And Vikram Solanki and Graeme Hick have been to the fore again, but what happened against Durham we might well be asking.

From the outside it must seem incredible and frustrating that the might of Middlesex can be panel beaten to all parts of Lord's while Durham's relative novices rolled the Worcestershire Royals over a week yesterday at New Road.

It seems to have been noughts or hundreds this year, particularly for Vikram.

The inconsistency will be as frustrating for the players as for the supporters.

Yet sometimes as a batter it just goes like that; your determination makes up for the zero with a hundred and then the rusty gate gets you with another nought.

The two losses in one-day matches this year have both been by a distance and in both, wickets have been lost in batches.

Maybe we're going to have to get used to the idea that the losses will be as spectacular as the victories; county cricket's equivalents of football teams managed by Kevin Keegan. The run rate in all one-day matches has certainly been impressive and might well count for something if the National League remains tight to the end of the season.

The run rate in four-day games has been equally impressive, often, as in the first innings against Middlesex, averaging out at four an over.

Ben Smith has definitely added substance to the middle order, but it remains a batting line-up favouring the flashing blade; the price of the entertainment remains the odd collapse.

The weather, however, had a major say at Lord's; it's a curiosity when there is more play at Swansea and Derby than in London, but that was the case for the first two days of this last round of Frizzell County Championship matches.

The week ahead brings a return match with Essex at Southend, a venue Worcestershire have good cause to remember. It was there in 1989 that Essex became the first county to be fined 25 points by the then TCCB for producing a pitch deemed unfit for first class cricket.

Worcestershire's subsequent Championship triumph was by six points.

Then the pitch preparation was in the hands of the local council; now Essex have it in their charge, but a positive result again looks a likely outcome on a surface on which Essex were bowled out twice last year for a combined total of 221 with the Kent seamers doing the damage.

Ronnie Irani will be missing with England, but Essex have won without him during his absence.

Worcestershire's batting will have to deal with the bounce of Ashley Cowan better than they did in the Benson and Hedges Cup semi-final so let's hope that this time noughts don't follow the hundreds.