Monday, July 27th, 2015

Rapids Suffer Second Successive Wash-Out At Durham

Rapids Suffer Second Successive Wash-Out At Durham

Worcestershire Rapids suffered a second successive wash-out when the Royal London One-Day Cup match with Durham at the Emirates ICG was abandoned without a ball being bowled.

Heavy morning rain left the ground saturated and the umpires, after taking an early lunch at 12 noon, came to an inevitable decision an hour later and called the game off.

Holders Durham, who defeated Northamptonshire in their opening game on Saturday, and the Rapids will take one point apiece from the fixture.

Worcestershire's home NatWest T20 Blast match with Lancashire Lightning on Friday evening had also suffered the same fate.

Worcestershire skipper Daryl Mitchell told BBC Hereford-Worcester's Trevor Owens: "It is disappointing. We are a long way from home and unfortunately we are only going back with one point.

"It was a bit disappointing not to get out there and have the crack at the Durham team. They are a good side and it would have been nice to play them. Unfortunately we've missed that opportunity.

"We are pretty confident after our progress in T20 cricket so we were looking to transfer some of our form in that into the 50 over format and start well in this competition.

"But  it had obviously been raining for 24 hours or so and from the moment we arrived I think we knew it was highly unlikely that we were going to get any cricket today."

Mitchell admits the competition will give Worcestershire an opportunity to rotate their pace bowlers and Jack Shantry was rested for the trip to the Emirates ICG.

He said: "The batters will pretty much plod on and keep going and try and get some form and maintain that through all the games.

"But certainly the seamers, Shants, Joe Leach, Charlie Morris, have played a hell of a lot of cricket and bowled a lot of overs for me this year so we will try and rotate them a little bit.

"But this competition does give you a few days off here and there as well so there will be plenty of opportunities hopefully to get the rest and keep them fit hopefully for the rest of the season."

The Rapids will now hope to get their RLC campaign underway on Thursday when they entertain Yorkshire Vikings at New Road (10.30am start).

Then they will make the trip down the M5 to do battle with Somerset at Taunton on the following day.

The Rapids are looking to improve on last season's position of seventh in their group.