Captain Jake Libby says Worcestershire Rapids can reflect on experiencing a “fantastic competition” after narrowly missing out on a semi-final spot in the Metro Bank One Day Cup.
The Rapids qualified from Group A as runners-up for the quarter-finals for the second successive season despite missing eight senior players through injury.
They were also on course to defeat Warwickshire at Edgbaston until Kai Smith’s brilliant century rescued his side who chased down a 287 target with one over to spare.
Libby, who himself scored a superb hundred, said: “We are absolutely gutted up there in the dressing room but I couldn’t be more proud of the boys.
“We’ve had a fantastic competition. It doesn’t feel like at the moment. We are absolutely devastated but I think you’ve got to take your hat off to Kai Smith.
“It was a fantastic innings. He played really well and we just couldn’t squeeze one more win out of it. I thought we did everything but get the win.
“We came to this competition this year not knowing what, if we are being honest, we were going to do this year.
“There’s been a lot of new faces, a lot of new opportunities for guys, and I think we had 10 List A debuts for the club.
“I’ve got to take my hats off to the lads, We’ve done really well. Watching guys come into play and they are really hungry to play, really hungry for their opportunity.
“I think that’s made a massive difference to us. I would have loved us to have gone onto a semi-final and play a game on Sunday which I feel like we deserved.”
Warwickshire recovered from 77-7 thanks to Smith and Will Rhodes but Libby admitted: “Fifty overs is a long time to bat and it’s probably been the story of a few of our innings as well and momentum changes.
“You can be 50-5 and you get one good partnership and you can really set it up for the back end and it is difficult to defend.
“That is the case with 50 over cricket. Ultimately we weren’t quite good enough to hold out today but I can’t fault the lads.
“I don’t think we did masses wrong and it just wasn’t our day.”
