Notts Outlaws receive ‘reality check’ in Royal London Cup defeat to Worcestershire Rapids

Outlaws surrendered their unbeaten record in this season’s 50-over competition, losing by five wickets at Blackfinch New Road.

Worcestershire’s South African all rounder Wayne Parnell returned his best List A bowling figures in England, finishing with 5-24 as the Outlaws were restricted to 121-9 in 32 overs. Paul Coughlin having to retire injured.

Nottinghamshire elected to bat and handed a List A debut to Lyndon James who replaced Ben Duckett after his England call-up to face Ireland on Friday.

But they never recovered from losing three wickets for 31 runs to the new ball pairing of Charlie Morris and Pat Brown, done for just 121 runs, a slide started by the early loss of Joe Clarke on his first return to his old ground.

Opener Chris Nash offered the only prolonged resistance with a half century.

Moores said: “It’s a bit of a reality check. We’ve played really well with the bat in the competition. We had a few changes today and we didn’t bat well enough.

“It was a tough pitch to bat on, a very used wicket, a bat first pitch and you had to build partnerships. Credit to Worcestershire but we had a bad day pretty much all-round.

“If we had got 180-200, it would have been really hard to chase but we didn’t get enough runs.

“We bowled okay. It didn’t really happen for us. It was a game we have to take on the chin. We are still top of the group, it’s still completely within our control.

“I don’t think we took our eye off the ball. I just don’t think we played well enough.

“We’ve got two group games left and we’ve got to make sure we top this group and get a home semi-final.

“The injury to Paul (Coughlin) is probably the toughest thing of the day. He has not been assessed yet. He’s on the bed and it looks like a bad hamstring pull.

“He will get scanned tomorrow and we will see where we are at. I just feel for him because at the end of the Lions trip he did (injured) his shoulder, came back to us, first game back he broke his finger and then the first game back again, he’s injured his hamstring.

“All we can hope is that things happen in threes and he has got them all out of the way.”