Parsons the hero as Cidermen beat Worcestershire

Man of the Match Keith Parsons was once more the hero for Somerset as they beat Worcestershire on Wednesday to progress to a lucrative home tie with Kent in the semi finals of the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy.

In front of a crowd well in excess of 5500, Taunton born Parsons scored 121, his highest in one day cricket, took two wickets, held onto two catches and threw down the stumps to secure a run out.

Already deprived of the services of Andrew Caddick and Richard Johnson, there was further injury misery for the Cidermen when Marcus Trescothick left the field in the 13th over of the morning with a broken left thumb, after fielding a fierce drive from Graeme Hick.

The England man joins a long Somerset injury list and will be missing from the cricket scene for at least six weeks.

At the start of the day Worcestershire had been put into bat, and after getting off to a flying start had been dismissed for 271.

With the score on 118 for I after 18 overs and Graeme Hick scoring quickly 350 seemed to be possible. However Parsons had other ideas and in his third over he tempted the former England man to play inside a ball that went on to knock over his off stump.

Hick and Vickram Solanki(53) had added 81 for the second wicket in 12 overs, but from that point on Worcestershire were reined back by some tight bowling and some excellent fielding.

Despite an unbeaten 85 from number four batsman Ben Smith, with the exception of Steven Rhodes(15) the rest of the Worcestershire batsmen failed to make double figures and they were dismissed for 271 in 49 overs.

The pick of the Somerset bowlers were Steffan Jones who ended with 3 for 47, Parsons who took 2 for 37 and Mike Burns 2 for 53.

In reply Somerset had slipped to 36 for 2 before Parsons walked to the wicket. Sharing in fifty plus stands with Burns (24) Blackwell(30) and then the match winning fifth wicket partnership of 106 with Rob Turner (47) Parsons took the Cidermen to within sight of the victory that had seemed highly unlikely earlier in the day.

In the end it was left to Keith Dutch to hit the winning runs to see Somerset home by 4 wickets with 15 balls to spare.

After the match Somerset coach Kevin Shine told me: "This was the greatest performance that I've seen from the boys since I took over as coach. Everything seemed to have gone against us, but we still ended up winning."