Worcestershire beat Hants in dramatic One-Day Cup final

Trent Bridge, Metro Bank One-Day Cup final

class=”ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3″>Hampshire 237-7 (45 overs): Orr 110, Gubbins 38, Waite 3-60, Allison 2-41

Worcestershire 188-7 (26.4 overs): Brookes 57, Libby 37, Currie 5-34

By three wickets, Worcestershire won (DLS).

In a rain-stricken thriller in the One-Day Cup final at Trent Bridge, Worcestershire defeated Hampshire by three wickets with two balls to spare.

The Rapids needed 13 off the final, which was bowled by Brad Wheal and was 188 over for the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern target.

As Kyle Abbott struggled to find his groove on the rope, Matthew Waite scrambled a two, hit a big six, and then hit Henry Cullen with the only ball he faced for the match-winning boundary.

Worcestershire won the T20 Blast for the first time in seven years, and it was only three days after being relegated from Division One of the County Championship.

After losing to Somerset in the T20 Blast at Edgbaston seven days ago, Hampshire lost the final two Saturdays.

A compelling finish to a game of cricket seemed unlikely for extended periods of the day, and even less so a compelling one.

Worcestershire, a county known for overcoming the odds, was proud to wear shirts in honor of their former player Josh Baker, who passed away last year at the age of just 20, all the while showing lots of spirit and no little skill.

As Orr set his stall out from the beginning with his four-ball solo strike, Captain Jake Libby won the toss and asked Hampshire to bat.

Before Waite squared up and caught at backward point for 38, the stand between him and captain Nick Gubbins had increased to 82.

For the first stoppage, which ended at 106-1, players left after 22 overs, and Hampshire added 35 runs for the loss of Fletcha Middleton for 18.

Toby Albert took 13 wickets for Worcestershire, and Ben Mayes took two for 169-4 when the third time the innings started was reduced to 45 overs.

But Orr continued, going from 87 to 117 in three balls off Waite’s six, four, four, and four to record his third One-Day Cup century this year from 118 deliveries.

Worcestershire’s openers, who had been set at revised 251 overs, had shifted to the middle when more rain started to fall.

When play resumed at 17:15, the score had been revised from 27 overs to 188, and they lost opener Gareth Roderick (12), who had replaced Brett D’Oliveira, who had been out injured, and Daniel Lategan, who had made a promising debut, to lead the team to 31-2.

The Rapids were back on track after Kashif Ali and Libby combined for 62 runs, but the defeat left them 107-4 and required more than 10 runs an over.

Brookes, however, continued to hold them to a high level with some powerful hitting, and he scored a half-century with a six-ball hit to reduce the target to 21 after two overs when he hooked up with Kyle Abbott.

After being released from England’s T20 squad, Currie fell to him after going for one big shot too many, taking the wickets in successive balls to take Rob Jones and Taylor for his best-ever List-A figures.

Nick Gubbins, the skipper of Hampshire, stated to BBC Radio Solent:

With the weather and the day’s stop-start nature, there is a lot to examine and it feels like a very long day.

It’s a difficult pill to take if you’re on the wrong end of that, despite how brilliantly they did to get us a game in.

“Our momentum and innings were definitely halted by the rain breaks.” It was always quite clear how difficult it was to predict future outcomes for Duckworth-Lewis and possible overreactions.