Strength in depth makes for a happy captain

Alex Wakely admitted that his side’s batting depth was a blessing after the four-wicket defeat of Holland.

The Steelbacks, who needed to win to keep their Yorkshire Bank 40 semi-final hopes alive, recovered from 44-4 to chase down the visitors’ 176-8 with 19 deliveries to spare.

And the captain was a relieved man afterwards, saying: “It helped having batters all the way down because this year we’ve got away with not using all of our order.

“In a way it was nice that some of those lower down got to have a bat before the weekend.

“It’s something we’ve been blessed with, we’ve had people coming in at nine, 10 and 11 who should be batting a lot higher and who have got 50s to their name.

“We certainly can’t complain and while it‘s down to the top order to be scoring the big runs, it’s good to know that we’ve got players lower down who can do a really good job.”

The outcome of the success is that the Steelbacks will go into their final game against Warwickshore at Edgbaston on Bank Holiday Monday knowing that victory could still see them make the last four.

And if that result materialises, and Nottinghamshire lose their final game, then they could yet top the group and automatically qualify.

But Wakely insisted that they won’t be worried about all of that until they have played in Birmingham.

He added: “All we can do is try to win our last game and see how it goes. We talked this week about still being in two competitions whatever happens on Saturday and that will be the case.

“It’s a nice position to be in and it will certainly give us some confidence going into the weekend.

“It wasn’t as convincing as we wanted but it was a win and that was all that we needed to do.”