Yorkshire were the visitors to New Road for the Friends Life t20 match which, after three home wash outs was played on a hot sunny day in front of a good sized crowd. The only change from the side that lost the previous afternoon against Leicestershire was the addition of Shaaiq Choudhry in the place of Aneesh Kapil. Daryl Mitchell won the toss for the home side and elected to bat first, on the same strip that had been used for the high scoring match against Sri Lanka a couple of days previous.
Moeen Ali and Vikram Solanki opened the innings for Worcestershire with Ali leading from the front from the first delivery. Moeen got the innings off to a brisk start scoring 40 off just 20 deliveries before being caught deep on the cover boundary by Azeem Rafiq in Richard Pyrah's first over. It was a 4th wicket stand between Alexei Kervezee and James Cameron worth 77 runs in just over 8 overs that enabled Worcestershire to post a good score. Both batsmen scored Twenty/20 career bests with Kervezee scoring 56 off 36 deliveries and Cameron 55 off 37 deliveries, the pair scoring 13 boundaries between them.
With skipper Daryl Mitchell adding a quick 11* in the final four balls of the innings Worcestershire reached 183-7 in their 20 over allocation. Ajmal Shahzad took 3-30 and Richard Pyrah 2-36 for Yorkshire.
Worcestershire bowled well with new ball and soon took control of the match taking four wickets within the first 6 power play overs. Both openers, Jack Shantry and Gareth Andrew picked up a wicket in their opening spells. Shakib Al-Hasan was in fine form picking up two wickets in his first over to leave the visitors in trouble from early on in the innings.
Joe Root and Gary Ballance both scored 26 but a good all round bowling and fielding performance by the home side ensured wickets fell at regular intervals as Yorkshire tried to up the run rate. Al-Hasan took a Twenty/20 career best 4-31 in a man of the match performance. Tim Bresnan scored a quick fire 25 off 17 balls at the end of the innings before becoming Ben Scott's fifth victim of the match comprising of three catches and two stumpings
Jack Shantry took 2-29 and Gareth Andrew who took the last two Yorkshire wickets in his 3rd over with successive deliveries, took 3-17 in 2.5 overs, earning him 3rd place in the current PCA rankings.
Yorkshire were bowled out for 142 in the 19th over giving Worcestershire a 41 run victory and consolidating their 4th place in the table with a chance of making the quarter finals.
Result: Worcestershire (183-7) beat Yorkshire (142) by 41 runs.
