WARWICKSHIRE stretched their winning run against Worcestershire by wrapping up a 181-run LV= County Championship victory before tea on the final day.

Set a victory target of 437 at Edgbaston, the visitors were bowled out for 255 to suffer their sixth successive defeat to their old rivals in four-day cricket.

The reverse came as a jolt for Daryl Mitchell's side after their eye-catching victory over Somerset at New Road last week.

But Warwickshire's first win of the season gets them up and running after two draws and sends them into next week's intriguing home clash with Durham with some momentum behind them.

Worcestershire director of cricket Steve Rhodes bemoaned his side's lost wickets before the lunch break and said: "They were two costly wickets that we lost just before lunch, as was the loss of Moeen Ali last night. There is never a good time to lose a wicket but just before a session ends is even more important.

"We were put under pressure by the way we batted in the first innings when we were bowled in 42 overs. That puts you in a very delicate position and it's the real reason why we ended up losing.

"You can't afford to have a bad session in four-day cricket as we have had in the three games we have lost. The nature of the game is to wait for the opportunity to get in front and ram it home and that's what Warwickshire did ever so well.

"Our bowlers did well. They worked tirelessly and wholeheartedly and by the time it got to the stand between Boyd Rankin and Chris Wright, who played ever so well, our bowlers had just run out of juice. That's because we hadn't given them enough recovery time while we were batting."

After resuming on the final morning on 88-2, Worcestershire needed at least two batsmen to last a long time and they scrapped hard throughout the morning only to lose those two wickets on the brink of lunch to pitch them into trouble.

They got to within 10 minutes of the interval having lost only one wicket in the session, nightwatchman Charlie Morris caught by Rikki Clarke at second slip off Keith Barker.

Mitchell and Tom Fell then added 47 in 20 overs with the former dropping the deepest of anchors. The captain formed the backbone of his team's resistance with a diligent 38 in almost four hours only to perish with lunch beckoning when, undone by extra bounce, he edged Boyd Rankin to Clarke in the cordon.

In the next over, Fell was trapped lbw by spinner Jeetan Patel for 33 and, having been a promising 147-3, Worcestershire went into lunch wobbling at 148-5.

The momentum stayed with the home side in the afternoon. Patel soon picked up his second wicket of the day with another lbw decision when Alex Gidman played across the line.

Alexei Kervezee chopped Clarke to Laurie Evans at gully and Ben Cox's engaging counter-attack (44 from 47 balls with eight fours) concluded with a bottom-edged cut to wicketkeeper Tim Ambrose off Patel.

Jack Shantry edged Rankin to Ambrose. Last pair Joe Leach and Sachithra Senanayake were soon parted with Senanayake edging Barker to bring Warwickshire victory with 44 overs to spare.