ANTHONY McGrath completed 1,000 first class runs for the first time in his career as Yorkshire took charge of the first day's play in their final home Championship match of the season against Worcestershire at Headingley on Wednesday.

McGrath wasted little time in scoring the 24 he required to reach the milestone and he was still going strong with a dashing 65 at the close when Yorkshire were 96-2 in reply to their opponents' 308, a score which would have been much smaller but for some big hitting early and late in the innings.

Chris Gayle, started it all off by blasting Deon Kruis for seven boundaries from his first seven scoring shots, the mayhem being played out while Yorkshire's debutant paceman Australian Mark Cleary began with two maidens to Stephen Moore.

Some of Gayle's strokes were authentic enough while others were off the edge but his luck ran out after dashing to 29 when he carved Kruis straight into the hands of Joe Sayers at third man.

Kruis soon recovered his poise while Cleary bowled extremely well but it was Tim Bresnan who made the biggest impact with two quick wickets to leave Worcestershire on 92-3.

His first was that of Graeme Hick, caught low at gully by Craig White who then held on to a breathtaking one-handed catch flinging himself to his left to send back Moore.

Vikram Solanki and Steven Davies shored up the middle order by getting into the 40s before being out but Yorkshire kept plugging away and Cleary finally collected his first wicket when Shoaib Akhtar poked the last of four catches to Simon Guy.

At 250-9, Worcestershire looked finished but Matt Mason and Nadeem Malik hit out successfully in a last wicket stand of 58 from 70 balls and it took a return catch by Richard Dawson off Mason to wrap things up.

Yorkshire's reply began badly as Matthew Wood drilled Kabir Ali straight to Gareth Batty at cover point in the first over but McGrath quickly took complete control of his 87 stand in 16 overs with Sayers.

Scoring freely off Ali and Mason, McGrath raced the partnership on to 50 in only eight overs and when Shoaib Akhtar joined the attack, McGrath swung his first ball to the boundary and continued to treat the Pakistan ace with contempt, driving him off the backfoot through the covers to dash to his half-century off 40 balls with his tenth four.

In the day's penultimate over, Sayers fell to a catch at third slip by Ben Smith off Nadeem Malik for 22, but nightwatchman Guy held out safely to the close when Yorkshire were 212 runs behind.

Updated: 11:26 Thursday, September 08, 2005