Worcestershire secure promotion to County Championship Division One

The crucial run – squirted into the off-side by Josh Baker – took Worcestershire to 300, giving them the second batting point required to ensure that Leicestershire could not overhaul them

Worcestershire have been promoted to Division One of the County Championship after securing the bonus points required to clinch second place in Division Two.

The crucial run – squirted into the off-side by Josh Baker – took Alan Richardson's side to 300, giving them the second batting point required to ensure that even a theoretical Leicestershire win over champions Durham with maximum points would not be enough to overhaul the New Road county.

It tops off a remarkable season for Worcestershire, whose season could so easily have been derailed in July by the news of a mass exodus of academy graduates, with Dillon Pennington, Jack Haynes, Josh Tongue, Pat Brown and Ben Cox all departing at the end of the season.

But the quintet all played their part in the second half of the season during a run to the One-Day Cup quarter-finals and latterly in the Championship run-in: Worcestershire have won nine games and lost just four in all competitions since their T20 Blast quarter-final defeat by Hampshire, which came 24 hours after the impending exits of Pennington and Tongue to Nottinghamshire were confirmed.

^{Captain Brett D'Oliveira scored a crucial century at Headingley [Getty Images]}

"I think it did have an impact, but the guys ensured the distraction side of it all had a minimal effect," said head coach Alan Richardson.

"It's full credit to the players who are staying, but also the ones that are not going to be around, that they've all bought in and shown a lot of commitment and really put a shift in for us.

"These things can derail you, but the boys should take colossal credit that they've dealt with it, they have managed it brilliantly well.

"It wouldn't be true to say it didn't affect us at times, but I'm always someone who looks at things and thinks you can dwell on them, and you can let them make a negative impact on you, or you can turn them around and see it as another challenge.

"We get lots of challenges, and they come in different guises and different forms, and that was one of them, but the boys dealt with it brilliantly well."

Even without that inconvenience, this achievement – six years to the day after their last promotion and a year to the week since they watched Middlesex earn promotion at New Road – would have represented a special effort.

🗣️ A message from the Boss! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/TOI7yU6UeV

— Worcestershire CCC (@WorcsCCC) September 27, 2023

Richardson only replaced Alex Gidman as head coach last winter, taking on the top job for the first time after a spell as bowling coach, with Kadeer Ali and Richard Jones also taking on new roles as his assistants.

They lost captain Brett D'Oliveira for most of August with a dislocated shoulder, but the D'Oliveira family has been a constant in Worcestershire's history since the second half of the last century, so his return for the final push was no surprise.

He made fifties against Glamorgan and Durham in early September before a crucial hundred against Yorkshire – with injuries meaning a longer tail than usual – put the finishing touches to a memorable campaign.

"I think there is a certain Worcestershireness about being programmed to get on with it," former captain Joe Leach told The Cricketer ahead of this week. He needs four more wickets for 50 in this season's County Championship.

One of Richardson's first moves as head coach was to introduce Dr. Andrea Faull-Brown as a performance psychology consultant over the winter. Half of the squad were overseas, a fair chunk were soon to be out of contract, but the upshot was a premise to work off and a picture of what Worcestershire wanted to achieve.

One way or another – with Ben Allison, an Essex loanee, and Kashif Ali both making crucial half centuries at Headingley – they have pulled off a promotion that could so easily have gone awry.