Worcestershire "greatly motivated" to make history with T20 Blast title defence, says Alex Gidman

The Rapids face a re-match of last year's final with Sussex in Friday evening's third quarter-final, and Worcestershire's coach maintains the motivation is still there to repeat last year's victorious campaign

Worcestershire coach Alex Gidman has revealed his Rapids squad are "greatly motivated" by the challenge of trying to become the first team to retain their Vitality Blast title.

The Rapids reached Finals Day for the first time last September and went onto defeat Sussex Sharks in the final at Edgbaston.

Now they face a re-match with the Sharks in Friday evening's third quarter-final at the 1st Central County Ground at Hove.

Both sides will be missing several of their key performers with the Rapids without Callum Ferguson, who has returned to Australia for personal reasons, Martin Guptill – on New Zealand duty – and Hamish Rutherford – called up this week by the Black Caps for a Twenty20 international in Sri Lanka.

But the Rapids still have match-winners such as captain Moeen Ali, Ross Whiteley, Ben Cox, Ed Barnard and Pat Brown – last year's leading wicket-taker in the Blast. 

"It is a great motivation for us (to be the first team to retain the title). It's an exciting motivation," Gidman said.

"It's an opportunity, I guess, to create a little bit of history.

"Being champions has been tough. There has been a level of expectation on the guys to perform literally week in and week out, or game in and game out.

^{Worcestershire beat Sussex in the 2018 Blast final}

"They are only human beings and no-one is going to go through the campaign without having a bad couple of matches.

"We have won a couple we looked like we were going to lose and lost a couple we should have won but that's the nature of the competition.

"The weather has played a part in the competition as well but, as a collective and as a whole club, we feel we've got a great opportunity."

Gidman added: "The initial hurdle was getting into the knockout stages and now we are looking to perform at our best for one game (at Hove) and, to see if that's good enough, and then a couple more after that.

"First it is about going down to Hove and trying our absolute best down there and taking on a team that this year have probably been the form team, probably the best in the whole competition.

"They have been an extremely strong and consistent team.

VISIT THE T20 BLAST HUB

"But we are now in a one-off game and we have got just as many match-winners as them.

"It's a great challenge for us and one I know the guys are really looking forward to it.

"Every team is beatable. It is such a weird game. It just needs one or two guys, whether it be with bat or ball, to have great matches.

"You can win it that way, or your whole team performs, so there are different ways of winning and we will take whichever way comes to get us over the line and back to Finals Day. That is our goal."

The Rapids have yet to finalise their squad but Rutherford's absence means they will have to make at least one change from the side beaten by Northamptonshire Steelbacks in their final group game.

Rutherford will return for when Worcestershire revert back to Specsavers County Championship action with back-to-back home games against Glamorgan – starting next Tuesday – and Gloucestershire.

Courtesy of the ECB Reporters Network