Rapids coach Gidman pays tribute to 'brilliant' Steelbacks

The Rapids were restricted to 124 for seven in their 20 overs, before Paul Stirling's 80 from just 48 balls saw the Steelbacks home with nine wickets and 29 balls to spare.

Gidman was ready to cut his players some slack as he feels the weather ruined their preparations for the game, but he accepted that the Steelbacks were worthy winners, and better in all departments.

“Credit to Northants, I thought they played very well, adapted to the conditions very quickly and executed their plans very well and we were half a yard off the pace in all facets to be totally honest," said the Rapids head coach.

“We haven’t played a game, Thursday was a wash-out, the weather has meant we haven’t had great preparation but no excuses. I thought Northants were brilliant."

Steelbacks perhaps surprised their hosts as they picked five spinners in their team, and although one of them - Tom Sole - didn't even bowl, they still bowled for 75 per cent of the innings.

“We faced 15 overs of spin and we’ve got to look at perhaps that is an area we can improve at," said Gidman.

"Although one day doesn’t give you much time to technically change too much, even tactically it’s a bit more of a mindset. But it is obviously an area we can try and back ourselves a little bit more in."

Gidman also felt Northants skipper Josh Cobb got lucky by winning the toss and making the home team bat first.

“I think it was quite a good toss to win," he said.

"In T20 generally it shouldn’t make too much difference but sometimes it does and it was a bit tacky, understandably so, it’s been under the covers a lot so we thought it might be harder to score on early on.

“Our guys were coming off saying it was just sticking in the wicket a little bit and it did improve with pace on the ball and they found it easier to start with than we did.

"But once again, they were the better team today and deserved to win.”