Red-hot Bath sink Wasps

Bath continued their remarkable end-of-season push with a 35-19 bonus-point victory over Wasps at Twickenham.

Wing Joe Maddock grabbed a hat-trick of tries and man of the match Olly Barkley claimed a 20-point haul as Steve Meehan's in-form side powered up to fourth place in the Guinness Premiership table.

Bath can now deprive Wasps of a play-off place by beating Leeds at the Rec in a fortnight.

Wasps director of rugby Tony Hanks made three changes to the team that won at Worcester a week earlier, recalling Mark van Gisbergen, Tim Payne and Joe Worsley. Skipper Tom Rees was making his 100th appearance for the club.

Marking his 200th for Bath was former England and Lions lock Danny Grewcock in front of 60,000 fans packed inside the home of English rugby.

Clever

Danny Cipriani landed two penalties to open up a 6-0 lead inside nine minutes for the hosts, although that deficit was reduced through Barkley's first points of the evening.

The first try came out of the blue from Bath on 18 minutes after captain Michael Claassens took a quick free-kick and Butch James ghosted through a gap before delivering a cleverly delayed one-handed pass to Barkley.

Nick Abendanon was on hand to send Maddock over for the try and Barkley added the conversion.

Another Barkley penalty on 22 minutes put Bath 13-6 ahead but the classy centre had not finished just yet.

Four minutes later his break split Steve Kefu and the limping Simon Shaw, leaving lock Stuart Hooper, Claassens and Abendanon to present Maddock with another try in the opposite corner.

Barkley was wide with the conversion and Bath then had to contend with the loss of Abendanon to the sin-bin for a block on Tom Varndell. Cipriani missed the simple penalty but was then successful from 45 metres.

Bath took an 18-9 lead into the interval but Cipriani kept Wasps in touch with the first points of the second half.

Wilted

However, Bath struck again just before the hour mark when Maddock intercepted Cipriani's floated pass before notching his hat-trick.

Barkley added the conversion and, as Wasps wilted, added a penalty on the hour to make it 28-12.

Cipriani's next and final act before being substituted was to knock on a simple pass from which Bath roared back onto the attack and Barkley finished things off, also converting his own try. At 35-12 the match was over, still with 15 minutes to play.

Wasps' afternoon was summed up when David Lemi broke clear and could have scored himself but passed to a surprised Joe Simpson who knocked on with the line clear.

It was only in the last minute that Wasps managed to get over the Bath line when replacement Ben Jacobs broke from a scrum, with Dominic Waldouck adding the conversion.