Yorkshire v Worcestershire (County Championship) : Day Four

Yorkshire showed their killer instinct by polishing off Worcestershire on Saturday.

They shrugged off the handicap of losing large chunks of the game to bad weather as they charged to an emphatic victory by an innings and 260 runs and were all done and dusted 20 minutes before Leeds Rhinos and Wigan kicked off their RL Challenge Cup match on the other side of the grandstand.

Joe Sayers and Jacques Rudolph with the bat and Matthew Hoggard with the ball were Yorkshire's principal players earlier in the game but on the final day it was paceman Tim Bresnan and leg-spinner Adil Rashid who held centre stage with four wickets apiece.

This was Yorkshire's third win in four Championship outings and they look supremely confident under the dynamic leadership of Darren Gough.

Last summer, they avoided relegation by a mere point in the final match of the season but now they are virtually safe already from the drop and are looking like true title challengers.

The ground had dried out well from the previous night's heavy rain when Worcestershire resumed their second innings on 29 for one, still 363 runs away from avoiding the innings defeat.

Phil Jaques soon survived a difficult slip chance when Younus Khan was unable to cling on to the ball but both the Australian and his captain Vikram Solanki did not appear to be under pressure until Bresnan joined the attack and wasted no time in claiming three wickets in one sensational over.

Jaques pulled him hard to mid-wicket where Rashid hurled himself to his right to hold on and Ben Smith was out first ball when he had his off-bail trimmed. It was a match which Smith will want to forget because he bagged a pair and also put down an easy catch to give centurion Sayers a life when he was only four.

Graeme Hick survived Bresnan's hat-trick ball but was held at second slip by Younus off his next and Worcestershire were struggling on 49 for four.

Then Rashid got in on the act by having Solanki taken at silly mid-off by Rudolph while Gareth Batty played and missed several times before cutting to point.

Worcestershire's seventh wicket went down at 89 in the over before lunch when Roger Sillence edged Rashid's leg-break to Anthony McGrath at slip and 35 minutes after the interval Rashid ended brief resistance by drifting a ball across Steven Davies to hit his leg stump.

Rashid also found himself on a hat-trick as Nadeem Malik edged his first ball to Younus at second slip and it was the Pakistani who sealed Yorkshire's victory by coming on and having Kabir Ali caught at short leg.

Yorkshire called up Simon Guy to keep wicket in place of Gerard Brophy who damaged his right hand. For the second time this season, Guy wore a face mask to safeguard from serious injury.