Worcestershire Assistant Head Coach, Kadeer Ali, says the Rapids are peaking at the right time as they clinched a place in the knockout stages of the Metro Bank One Day Cup.
The Rapids completed a sixth win in eight games with an emphatic eight wicket success over Sussex Sharks at New Road.
Azhar Ali top-scored with 74 but Kashif Ali, with a 26 ball half century, and Gareth Roderick (41) also made important contributions with the bat as Worcestershire chased down a 191 target in just 26.4 overs.
Their efforts followed on from another excellent all-round effort from the bowling attack, with spinner Josh Baker taking three wickets after the seamers had done the early damage.
Kadeer said: “Absolutely delighted for the boys. They have worked really hard this year and one of our aims, in the T20 and 50 over competitions, was to get to the knockout stages and we were absolutely brilliant against Sussex.”
“The biggest thing for me has been the mentality. The lads have been really positive, played with some freedom, and today was a really good example of that.
“We wanted to catch up with the net run rate and have gone out in the second innings and played like that.
“Kashif, Azhar and Gareth were absolutely superb and that’s the mentality that has got us going all through the year.
“Surprised they chose to bat? Yes and no. We know the ball does a bit here in the first hour but it was a used wicket, the third game on it, so you could understand why they chose to bat.
“Look, we would have bowled first because we know the first 10-15 overs is crucial and, as you saw last week against Warwickshire, you can easily be three or four wickets down in that period.
“Even the game against Gloucestershire, when we scored 375, after the first powerplay we were 24-1 and could easily have been three or four down.
“The new ball here is tough work but once you get through that, the wicket gets nice and it is then hard to defend.”
Kadeer added: “The boys are playing well. We are peaking at the right time. Libbs just mentioned up there that the bowling, fielding and batting at the moment is peaking at the right time and that is really important in tournaments.
“We had a bad loss against Warwickshire here but I think sometimes that does you some good as well. It gets you back down to earth and working hard again.
“We are happy with where we are. We are playing some really good cricket and have got a lot of confident boys up there.”
