We didn’t score enough says Wakely

The visitors, after electing to bat, posted 152-7 but this was overhauled by the hosts with seven balls to spare thanks mainly to an excellent unbeaten half century from Alviro Petersen.

And Wakely is well aware of where the blame for defeat lay, saying: “I think par score here is 160-170 and I think, minimum, we were 20 runs short.

“I thought we scrapped hard and we’ve had two good scraps down here the last two times we’ve played but at the end of the day we were 20 runs short.

“We weren’t expecting it to do as much early on with the new ball. It made it quite hard to hit through the line and score freely.”

That they had something to bowl at was down to David Willey’s 45 in the middle order and Wakely was delighted with his all-rounder’s contribution.

He added: “We know he can do that, that’s why he’s there at number five now.

“He can play almost as a genuine bowler and a genuine batsman, his cricket is improving and he can clear the ropes which is something we’ve struggled with in the past couple of years.”

There’s no rest for the County as they start a Championship game against Lancashire at the County ground tomorrow (Monday) morning, a scenario that Wakely says just has to be dealt with

He said: “It’s not ideal that we’ve got to start straight away but that’s what we’ve got to do and we’ll see how we turn up tomorrow.”