Who are the key players? How did they do last year? Where are they strong? Where might they be weak? Key questions answered ahead of the new T20 Blast campaign
Coach: Alex Gidman
Captain: Moeen Ali
Last season: Sixth in Central Group
How did they do last year?
By the standards set in recent years by Worcestershire, last year’s T20 Blast was a poor outlier in a campaign beset by the unavailability of star player Moeen Ali, with others struggling for their best form.
Nationwide, only Derbyshire – in the North Group – accrued fewer points than Alex Gidman’s men, who won just twice and were on the wrong end of a couple of heavy defeats.
Pat Brown, so often a trump card for the Rapids on their remarkable rise as a T20 force, endured the toughest summer of his career, admitting to The Cricketer: “At times I was embarrassed.”
New Zealand overseas recruit Hamish Rutherford was a rare bright spark, topping the run-scoring charts with the county’s only hundred of the tournament.
Having won the competition in 2018 and come within a single ball of repeating the feat a year later, they will want to write off last summer’s aberration as a blip.
Who are their key players?
Despite his difficulties in 2020, Brown remains a high-class seamer in white-ball cricket. Only once in T20 Blast history has a bowler taken more wickets in an individual season than during his 2018 breakthrough, when he claimed 31 scalps en route to winning the title.
A year on, he impressed again and was rewarded with an England debut in New Zealand. There were mitigating factors in 2020, with back problems and mental struggles culminating in a brutally honest interview at the end of the summer. But after a winter’s training and an early summer spent bowling in second-team cricket, Brown – with his unusual skillset – is too talented not to come again.
Moeen Ali could be the difference between Worcestershire reaching Finals Day and making an early exit
Worcestershire’s success in the format has been built on a collective, however; Ben Cox and Ed Barnard play their own vital roles – Cox with the gloves and Barnard as a canny allrounder and as one of the circuit’s better fielders. Ross Whiteley’s reputation as a six-hitter is well-earned, while Jake Libby’s move from Nottinghamshire has transformed him into the one of the country’s most consistent openers. Only Rutherford scored more Worcestershire runs in last season’s Blast, so hopes will be high for a repeat. Riki Wessels, a fine limited-over batsman, only managed 79 runs in six innings last time around – he is far better than those figures suggest.
And then, there is Moeen Ali. How much of him Worcestershire see is still unclear, but the England allrounder will be among the very best players involved – he is ranked ninth on the men's T20 Player Index. He captained the county to glory in 2018 and played one of the Blast’s all-time great innings at Hove in 2019.
What are their biggest strengths?
Worcestershire’s recruitment has been savvy: Ben Dwarshuis is one of several Sydney Sixers players signed up for this year’s competition. The Big Bash League champions know how to win and the Australian left-arm seamer has been a crucial cog in their wheel.
Alongside him is Ish Sodhi, the New Zealand leg-spinner who has been signed as a late replacement for Nepalese star Sandeep Lamichhane. His signature represents a last-minute coup for a club who have been indebted to the leggies of Brett D’Oliveira through the early stages of their LV= Insurance County Championship campaign as the only available spinner on their senior staff, with Moeen absent at the Indian Premier League and Ben Twohig released at the end of last year.
It means that Worcestershire’s bowling stocks are plentiful: an attack featuring Brown, Dwarshuis, Moeen and Sodhi will be one of the best going.
Where might they have a weakness?
It is difficult not to feel like Worcestershire might be light of a top-class batsman, especially when Moeen is unavailable. The runs of Rutherford in 2020 were much-needed – he contributed two of the six individual scores above fifty, while Martin Guptill and Callum Ferguson have also been important players in this triumphant era.
The decision to gamble on two overseas bowlers, therefore, places the onus on the likes of Wessels, Whiteley, Libby, Jack Haynes and Gareth Roderick, signed from Gloucestershire ahead of this season. Whether there is enough firepower there, only time will tell.
Strategically, though, Worcestershire haven’t got much wrong in this format in the last three years, so it would be wrong to doubt them now.
What are their chances of reaching Finals Day?
Much will depend on the presence of Moeen, a talismanic captain and perhaps the most dangerous top-order batters in the competition. Likewise, if Worcestershire’s intelligently assembled bowling attack can fire, they might not even need to post such big totals themselves.
Possible XI: Jake Libby, Riki Wessels, Moeen Ali, Jack Haynes, Gareth Roderick, Ben Cox, Ed Barnard, Brett D’Oliveira, Pat Brown, Ben Dwarshuis, Ish Sodhi
Fixtures: June 9 - Notts (h); June 11 – Northants (a); June 13 – Lancashire (h); June 16 – Yorkshire (h); June 18 – Northants (h); June 22 – Notts (a); June 23 – Yorkshire (a); June 25 – Durham (h); June 27 – Leicestershire (h); July 1 – Lancashire (a); July 2 – Derbyshire (a); July 9 – Birmingham (h); July 16 – Birmingham (a)
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