SKIPPER Joe Leach hailed a “very clinical” performance as Worcestershire overcame Northamptonshire by eight wickets to maintain their 100 per cent start in Specsavers County Championship Division Two.

All the bowlers contributed in dismissing Northants for 343 in their second innings with Aussie Nathan Lyon finishing with three wickets from his first elongated spell for the County.

Then opener Daryl Mitchell (78 not out) and Joe Clarke (34no) completed victory during the extra eight overs at Wantage Road.

It sealed a fourth successive win for Worcestershire and completed a swift double over Northamptonshire.

Leach said: “Four out of four? Brilliant. There is not much else I can say apart from that. We were very clinical.

“I challenged the guys at the start of the week to make sure we worked hard to get ourselves into a position to win the game and we did that. All credit to them.

“We’ve had to work really hard here. The pitch on day one probably wasn’t an obvious bowl-first wicket by any stretch of the imagination.

"We didn’t really know what to do. So we thought if we can restrict them in that first innings and bat well we would put ourselves in a good position for the game and luckily we did that.”

Leach, who reached 200 first-class wickets during the game, continued: “Hats off to Mitch for two fantastic innings.

“His contribution in this game has been very good as have all the bowlers.

“They’ve all toiled away. Northants made it a bit trickier for us in that second innings but all credit to the boys. They worked really hard.”

Leach had no doubts about trying to seal victory on the evening of the third day.

He said: “You want to win the game as quickly as you can. If you can win it you kill it off and that’s what we worked so hard to achieve up until that point.

“Mitch sent a signal off as to what we wanted to do and the way we are playing at the minute we want to win as quickly as possible.”

Leach believes the standards of Worcestershire’s performances were similar during the early part of last season but the difference this time is they are getting over the finishing line.

He added: “Twelve months ago at this stage of the season we had played pretty similar cricket and hadn’t won a game. It was just one of those things.

“This time we’ve managed to kill teams off when we’ve put ourselves into positions to win and four from four shows that.”