After rain put paid to both of Notts Outlaws’ weekend fixtures in the Royal London One-Day Cup, they will be hoping to maintain their unbeaten run in this competition when they travel to face Durham at Chester-le-Street.

Assistant manager Wayne Noon, while bemoaning the loss of two matches to the weather, insisted that his side would be fully motivated and prepared for the trip north.

“It has been frustrating weekend,” he said. 

“Losing two games on the bounce is never easy, I’m not sure we had that once last year.

“We’re still in a good position and we’ve had a day of making sure that the lads’ skills are up to speed ahead of the trip to Durham, especially after having two days sat down and hoping to play. 

“We’ve had a good session and the boys have gone through virtually everything so there wont be any excuses of being sat down for too long or not having played enough cricket.

“Sometimes this can be a bit of a blessing, recovery time is a welcome change in the season we’ve had fixture wise. There’ll be no excuses, we’ll rock up there and give it our best shot.” 

Durham have historically excelled chiefly with the red ball, but they have dangerous with the white ball this summer, as the Outlaws found out earlier in the season. Arriving at Trent Bridge in the NatWest T20 Blast, the Jets overturned Notts and showcased their ability throughout their order. 

“It’s not going to be easy up at Durham, they’re getting together a little bit of form and could still qualify. That said if we beat them it’ll knock them out,” said Noon.

“There’s a lot of incentive there and we just need to make sure that when we arrive, the boys are 100% and up for the job.

“They have some experience in their batting and some dangerous players – Mark Stoneman is in form, Phil Mustard is in form and obviously there’s Paul Collingwood too, he’s a day-in-day-out performer. They should have Ben Stokes too, which will give them another boost.

“They’re dangerous, but we’re third for a reason. We’re playing good one-day cricket and we haven’t lost yet so we should go in there and put in a performance. 

“Ideally we’ll win the next three, but this is our last game without Hales and Taylor. If we can get a win at Durham it’ll be a confidence boost ahead of their return for the game at Lord’s.”

 

Notts Outlaws squad to face Durham Jets (from): Sam Kelsall, Michael Lumb, Riki Wessels, Samit Patel, James Franklin, Chris Read, Steven Mullaney, Sam Wood, Brett Hutton, Ajmal Shahzad, Jake Ball, Luke Fletcher, Harry Gurney.