Cricket
Royals captain upbeat despite heavy defeat

Buy photos » Jack Shantry celebrates bowling the Gladiators' Ian Cockbain on his way to a four wicket haul. Picture by Ian Smith.

WORCESTERSHIRE captain Daryl Mitchell believes his side can still challenge for a Clydesdale Bank 40 semi-final spot despite suffering a crushing 109-run defeat against Gloucestershire at New Road on Sunday.

The Royals never recovered from a catastrophic batting collapse as they slumped to 25-5 chasing 239 for victory and were condemned to their third defeat from six games in the 40 over competition.

The result leaves Worcestershire fourth in the group and five points adrift of leaders the Netherlands at the midway point as the counties shift their attention to the FP t20 competition.

But the Worcestershire skipper has been encouraged by his side's overall performances in the CB40 and believes they still have all to play for when the competition resumes.

"We are half way through the 40 over competition and deserve to be a little bit better placed than we are really," Mitchell said.

"I think we have played some really good cricket and there have been some much improved one day performances, this game aside. Duckworth-Lewis has stuffed us a couple of times so we probably deserve to have won four out of six rather than three, but we are still in there fighting with another whole round to go."

"Fortunately everyone is beating each other in our group. The Dutch are out in front and are obviously the ones to catch but they have lost a couple of games as well so it's going to be an interesting second half."

"With everyone beating each other if we can put a good run together and get a bit of momentum going then we can still easily qualify."

Mitchell admitted his side had been outplayed in all departments by Gloucestershire and put the poor performance down to "a bad day at the office."

"We were disappointing really in all three facets of the game if I'm honest. I thought we bowled OK and fielded OK but we have performed better than that and then with the bat we had a disastrous start and there was no coming back really," he said.

"You have to give Gloucestershire a fair amount of credit I thought they played pretty well to be honest."

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