You wait 52 intensely attritional overs for a wicket and Mark Footitt suddenly takes three in his first 15 balls after tea. The Derbyshire left-armer, whose 56 scalps overnight make him most successful quick bowler in the championship this year, removed Richard Oliver in the reply’s third over and broke a 125-run stand when Daryl Mitchell, playing no shot, was bowled for 67.
He then whipped out Alexei Kervezee and Tom Kohler-Cadmore but could not dislodge Tom Fell, despite beating him countless times in a hostile post-lunch spell during which Fell took 26 tortured balls to move from 25 to 26.
Fell’s 70, an effort of character, ended tamely against spin after Ben Cox was bowled by a fine ball from Wayne White as the Worcestershire decline continued.
With their lines incisively breached by Footitt, they lost five for 65 through 80 minutes that may potentially have settled the game, though they held off the new ball in the last six overs.
Derbyshire, eight down overnight, reached 356 in the morning, Alex Hughes falling for 74, nine short of a career-best, when Charlie Morris claimed his maiden five-wicket bag in his 14th match at this level.
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Hughes, adding only a single, was leg-before playing across the line as Worcestershire secured their 27th consecutive full quota of bowling points. Derbyshire, with Footitt, an infamous No11, arriving, still needed nine to claim a fourth batting point, but he belied his reputation by smacking ten off one over from the disappointing Mitchell McClenaghan.
The gods of cricket then punished Footittt when Morris deflected a Tony Palladino drive onto the non-striker’s stumps, running him out for 11 and ending the innings. But McClenaghan, who bowled too short and conceded 91 wicketless runs from his 21 overs, shared a profligacy with Joe Leach that rather undid the efforts of Morris and Jack Shantry, whose 61.3 overs between them allowed only 2.13 per over.
This was not a failing of which Derbyshire’s quartet of seamers, seeking a third successive win, were guilty in a Worcestershire reply under heavy cloud that was always a struggle. To their credit, despite severely demanding conditions, Mitchell and Fell fought through, once the skittish Oliver had returned a catch to Footitt from a leading edge, trying to whip his slower ball through mid-wicket.
Mitchell, the captain, passed sixty for the ninth time in 22 innings of a superb championship campaign and Fell’s 70 from 194 balls included no fewer than 158 from which he failed to score. Their resistance may prove in vain.