martin guptill is aiming to sign off in style when he and travis head make their last appearances for worcestershire rapids in the vitality blast top-two clash with lancashire lightning at New Road tomorrow.
the new zealand batsman smashed worcestershire’s quickest ever t20 century – off 35 balls – in last night’s nine wicket win over northamptonshire steelbacks.
now he is looking to help the rapids chalk up another victory before heading off to play in the caribbean premier league while head will link up with australia ‘a’ for their tour of india.
guptill said: “it’s a massive game on sunday, it’s my last game and hopefully we can get another win and then, with six wins out of eight, we would be in a good spot to qualify for the quarter-finals.
“i’m off to the caribbean premier league after sunday, off to barbados, so i’m looking forward to that and a completely different challenge to playing in the blast here.
“but i have enjoyed it here. it’s been really good. there are a fantastic bunch of guys here.”
guptill has played in eight blast matches while head has appeared in six specsavers county championship, four royal london one-day cup and five blast games.
head bowling coach alan richardson, looking forward to tomorrow’s game, said: “they are all pretty big games and in this competition, anyone can beat anyone else.
“lancashire are a strong side and we’ve had some really good battles with them already this year in white ball and red ball cricket.
“you very rarely go ‘win, loss, win, loss.’ you have a band of winning some games and then potentially losing some games so it was nice after a couple of disappointing results to be able to turn it around on friday.”
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north group table
lightning played 7, won 5, lost 2, tied 0, no result 0, points 10, run rate 0.936
rapids 7, 5, 2, 0, 0, 10, 0.501
jets 6, 4, 2, 0, 0, 8, 0.673
vikings 6, 4, 2, 0, 0, 8, 0.51
outlaws 7, 4, 3, 0, 0, 8, 0.4
foxes 7, 3, 4, 0, 0, 6, 0.179
bears 7, 2, 4, 1, 0, 5, 0.603
falcons 6, 2, 4, 0, 0, 4, -0.609
steelbacks 7, 0, 6, 1, 0, 1, -1.995
table after matches on friday, july 27.
