Worcestershire Rapids Director Of Cricket Steve Rhodes has given his reaction to the County's 23 run defeat by Northamptonshire Steelbacks in a Royal London One-Day Cup clash at New Road.
The Rapids were eventualy bowled out for 296 in 49.5 overs in pursuit of a 320 target with Tom Kohler-Cadmore scoring his maiden List A century.
Rhodes said: "It was a good game of cricket, an ideal 50 over game, a good advert for 50 over cricket.
"Tim Packwood (head groundsman) has done a great job with the pitch and I'm sure everybody has enjoyed the cricket that has been played.
"They might not have enjoyed the result if they are Worcestershire supporters but it was a hell of a game of cricket.
"I think 320 was a good score. Could it be done? Definitely. The plan was working quite well. Tom Kohler-Cadmore scored a good hundred and his partnership with Tom Fell (125 in 18 overs) was excellent.
"Sadly some of those later overs before the end of that middle powerplay when we lost Tom Fell, if we had been able to maximise those fielding restrictions better there, that would have meant chasing less.
"We did have wickets in hand but were then chasing 10 an over off the last 10 overs and that's a difficult ask even with wickets in hand.
"But also the two wickets in the over of the two guys that were in (Kohler-Cadmore and Ross Whiteley), if one of those had seen it through to the end,I still think we would have probably won."
Worcestershire conceded several wides during the closing stages of the Northamptonshire innings.
Rhodes said: "Some of the crowd might wonder about some of the wides and extras when we were bowling but the lads were purposefully bowling down the blue lines.
"Sometimes if you are an inch out sadly you bowl a wide but the idea is to try and stop off the middle of (Rory) Kleinveldt's bat and for quite a part of that, we did do that. There was some good execution with the ball."
Worcestershire will probably now need to defeat Lancashire Lightning and Notts Outlaws in their final two games to have a realistic chance of reaching the quarter-finals.
Rhodes said: "If we play like that, we will go close because we didn't have a bad game. We played a game that wasn't quite right today but we were near."
