Worcestershire defeat leaves Steelbacks skipper Wakely frustrated

With a quarter-final place already secure, the home side had nothing to play for but that was of little consolation to the Steelbacks’ captain.

He said: “It was a little bit frustrating as we talked about not taking our foot off the gas but I think that we did that a little bit.

“We didn’t perform and that was frustrating as the captain because we just didn’t perform. There was no buzz or atmosphere in the field which is where we’ve been very good this year.

“Nothing was on the game so that made it difficult to turn up for and some of the lads were a litle bit complacent.”

In pursuit of the visitors’ 182-6, the Steelbacks were in good shape at the end of the six powerplay overs but the loss of three wickets in a short space of time proved costly as Wakely acknowledged.

He continued: “What we’ve done very well this season is not to lose wickets in clusters and that is exactly what we did tonight.

“You can’t have people getting 20 and then getting out, like I did, you need someone to bat right through and then others can play the cameos at the end and we just didn’t have that.”

Even in defeat, Wakely pointed to a couple of good signs for the side, saying: “There were a couple of positives, Olly Stone bowled four good overs and Hally (Andrew Hall) got another game in before the Championship on Friday so it wasn’t all bad.

“We’ll have to park what happened here, get ready for Gloucestershire on Friday and then think about the quarter-final next week.”