Warwickshire slip to unlikely defeat at Essex

Cox, who hit 112 from 192 balls, was joined in a record fifth-wicket partnership against Warwickshire of 176 in 54 overs with Matt Critchley that took Essex within sight of their 330-run target.

Warwickshire were left to rue what might have been.

The match had swung every which way during the first three days with both sides in the ascendancy at various times. Warwickshire had recovered from 104-6 to gain a first-innings lead of 235, but declined to enforce the follow-on. When they were dismissed for 94 second time around, that decision came under the microscope. It left Essex needing 330 to win in more than five sessions.

Critchley reached his third half-century of the season with a smart drive that eluded a diving extra cover for his sixth boundary.

Essex scored 21 from the six overs before the new-ball was taken, still requiring 85 runs to win.

Cox reached his second century for Essex with his 14th four, clipped though midwicket. But he did not last much longer, flicking Che Simmons’s first ball off his legs to Jacob Bethell on the deep square-leg boundary to depart after 192 balls.

It reignited Warwickshire’s intensity. Suddenly Rae was digging the ball in short and Michael Pepper was ducking under a couple of deliveries. Pepper then decided to advance down the wicket, stepped towards leg, was out-thought by the bowler and ended up playing on.

It wasn’t to be for the Bears though as Simon Harmer and Crithcley steered the hosts to their target for a four-wicket win.

Alex Davies said: “It’s a bitter pill to swallow. Congratulations to Essex, they played some good cricket over the four days. But this defeat was our own doing and that’s definitely harder to take. We had a first-innings lead of 235, it’s criminal to lose a game from that position.

“We’ve lost the game in the third innings. Barney and Burgie batted wonderfully in the first innings, but as a top-order we need to look at ourselves hard. We were 50-5 in both innings and we can’t expect the lower order to bail us out.

“The follow-on is obviously a contentious decision, but we couldn’t afford to enforce it really. We’ve got a lot of bowlers injured at the minute: Ollie has run in all year and he’s really feeling the pinch. We’ve got Michael Rae who’s not played a game of cricket in months so he was undercooked, and we’ve got Che on debut. So we needed to get those boys a bit of a rest. But if we’d batted anywhere near what we should have done it would have got them a nice rest.

“Another contributory factor was not wanting to bat last on a Chelmsford pitch against Simon Harmer. We’d earnt the right to either enforce or not enforce by bowling so well and we thought the wicket was going to get a lot worse. If we’d batted last on a pitch against Simon Harmer it could have put us under a bit of pressure, so all those factors combined and we decided not to enforce. The bottom line is if we bat half as well as we can it doesn’t get spoken about because we set 500.

“We’re hurting right now, but we’ll stick together as a group. We’ll reflect individually on our performances, especially as top-order batters.”