Worcestershire named an unchanged eleven for the televised floodlit Friends Life t20 match against Derbyshire at Derby. Daryl Mitchell won the toss and elected to bat first. Despite scoring 15, ten of which were from wide deliveries, off the first over Worcestershire struggled to gain any momentum on a slow paced pitch.

Vikram Solanki top scored with 28 from 29 deliveries but runs were otherwise hard to come by against some disciplined spin bowling and a slow pitch. Only eight boundaries were scored in the 20 over allocation as Worcestershire reached a modest 121-7, with Ben Scott and James Cameron both scoring 17 each. Gareth Andrew was not able to repeat his usual big innings with the Mongoose bat, returning a catch to Wes Durston for 8, but still remains the leading run scorer for Worcestershire in the t20 this season.

Tom Knight was the pick of the home bowlers with his left arm spin taking a career best 3-16 in his four over allocation, helped by an economical spell of 0-20 in four overs by Chesney Hughes.
Despite only having a modest target to chase the home side also found it difficult to find the boundary in their innings, which combined with the occasional rash shot and some good fielding meant that the Worcestershire bowlers were able to control the match. Derbyshire reached 27-3 by the end of the power play overs, with spin accounting for two of those wickets.
 

Moeen Ali and Shakib Al-Hasan bowled well in combination to put pressure on the home batsmen. Both bowlers got the ball to turn and took three wickets between them in their initial three over spells with Moeen taking 2-10 and Shakib 1-13.

Hughes, normally a very powerful player struggled against the spin and scored only one boundary before edging a catch to keeper Ben Scott for 22 in Chris Whelan’s first over. With the score then on 56-6 it was always going to be an uphill struggle for the home side, with only three batsmen passing double figures.

Chris Whelan produced a career best spell of 4-21 in his four overs to wrap the victory up for Worcestershire. Steffan Jones struck 24 off 22 deliveries but was last man out with two balls left in the innings, run out by a direct hit by Daryl Mitchell, his second run out of the innings. It rounded off a good all round team performance by Worcestershire which raised them to fourth in the table.

Worcestershire (121-7) beat Derbyshire (106) by 15 runs.