TWO matches lost after having a first innings advantage magnifies the sense of loss. There is a sense of frittering something away.

Mentally, it's not easy to deal with or come back from. It's like leading 1-0 and conceding two late goals, or in the case of the Leicestershire game, three.

In neither of these games did anyone go on to make a hundred -- they are so important.

You'll win games without them and you'll lose them when you have scored them, but cricket is a game of probability and averages. And when you score hundreds you load the stats in your favour.

A pitch deemed to be good for 300 runs yields more to the side whose players accumulate in the protective shadow of the centurion -- the averages swing in your favour.

The Yorkshire game was great and credit to the visitors for their resolve. Worcestershire dipped in that crucial and vulnerable third innings, but I wonder whether the initiative was not fully seized in the first innings when we might have pushed on to 400.

Complacency can enter a first innings with 300 behind it and another chance to come.

Yorkshire are a good side and fought back like good sides do. Worcestershire have to be strong enough in all respects to ride the counter punch and come out on top.

That's what the best teams do. That's what Australia have done. They have found another gear to combat England's impudent tilting at their crown.

The county visit Northampton this week and can expect the familiar dry, spinning wicket. No difficult questions there for the captain who wins the toss.

Vikram Solanki has a 50 per cent chance to load the dice in his team's favour. Northants have just come from losing the toss and the game in such circumstances at Chelmsford.

Solanki will return from exile to find a chastened team and a new head coach. Whether he has a 'gun' fast bowler will depend on fitness issues as yet unresolved.

Dry, high summer wickets are what Shoaib is used to and what we need him for. Otherwise we might find Martin Love stacking the runs in his team's favour.

The county need to reassert themselves through above average, match-winning displays.