Royal London One-Day Cup Playoff 1, Worcestershire vs Somerset: Preview, likely XIs, predictions

Worcestershire will host Somerset for Playoff 1 of the Royal London One Day Cup, at New Road, Worcester, on May 9. While Somerset have won the title only once, back in 1979, Worcestershire have lifted the trophy four times – in addition to winning the Gillette Cup and Benson & Hedges Cup once each.

Worcestershire are in excellent form as a unit. They had chased down 352 in their last match, in Group A, against Derbyshire; and in the two matches before that, they had bowled out Yorkshire for 143 and Nottinghamshire for 121.

Somerset, on the other hand, had beaten Surrey by 5 wickets in their last match, after losing to Hampshire. The highlight of their journey, however, remains their opening match, where they put up 358/4 and bowled out Kent for 94.

Head to head

Worcestershire have beaten Somerset 30 times and lost 18 times in all List A cricket. They last met three years ago, in the same tournament, at Taunton, where Moeen Ali (81) and Daryl Mitchell (64) had taken them to 210, Peter Trego taking 3/33.

Somerset won by 9 wickets with 79 balls in hand thanks to a 188-run opening stand between Mahela Jayawardene (117*) and Jim Allenby (81).

Key players

Wayne Parnell (Worcestershire): Only three men have taken more wickets than Parnell’s tally of 19 this season. For Worcestershire, nobody else more than 10. He also has a strike rate of 113. His last matches have fetched him 14 wickets (including spells of 5/24 and 5/25) and a 57-ball 76.

Craig Overton (Somerset): Craig has been the more impressive of the Overton twins this time. He has struck at 125 and has taken 17 wickets, but a more telling statistic is his economy of 4.48 – the second-best in the tournament.

Likely XIs

Worcestershire: Riki Wessels, Tom Fell, Callum Ferguson, George Rhodes, Brett D’Oliveira (c), Ben Cox (wk), Ross Whiteley, Ed Barnard, Wayne Parnell, Pat Brown, Josh Tongue.

Somerset: Tom Banton (wk), Azhar Ali, Peter Trego, James Hildreth, Tom Abell (c), George Bartlett, Lewis Gregory, Roelof van der Merwe, Craig Overton, Jamie Overton, Josh Davey.

Prediction

Worcestershire, the better side (both historically and in the tournament), to make the most of their home advantage.