Mick Newell has confirmed that Ben Hilfenhaus will make his Notts Outlaws debut in Sunday’s NatWest T20 Blast encounter against Worcestershire Rapids.
The former Australia international is set to replace Stuart Broad in the Outlaws lineup for the trip to New Road, with Will Gidman also coming into the 14-man squad.
And after what he admits was a disappointing performance in Friday’s home defeat at the hands of the Leicestershire Foxes, the Nottinghamshire Director of Cricket hinted that Hilfenhaus for Broad may not be the only change to the side.
“Worcestershire are a good young team with some high quality players,” Newell said.
“They’ve had a good win tonight, Moeen Ali is a terrific cricketer, Daryl Mitchell is a very good player as well and Saeed Ajmal is also around. They’re going to be up for beating us, so we’ve got to be much better.
“Hilfenhaus is coming in for Broad and we’re also looking at the balance of the team and the need to get a slightly slower bowler in there.
“If you look around the group table, everyone has lost at leas two games now. I don’t think anybody is running away with this, because T20 is such a hit and miss game.
“From that perspective, I’m not too concerned. I’m more concerned with the way we played tonight against Leicestershire.
“We made the wicket look as though it was doing a little bit and quite hard to score. Nobody got in and scored at any pace. Even the guys that batted for a long period of time were still struggling.”
Left-arm paceman Harry Gurney agrees with Newell that a distinct improvement is required if the Outlaws are to emerge victorious from New Road.
“As with anyone, Worcestershire are a dangerous opposition,” he said.
“They’re going to have Moeen Ali available, and Saeed Ajmal will be difficult to get away, so we go to New Road and – as is always the case – we have to be on our game if we’re going to get away with a win.
“Against Leicestershire we probably didn’t get enough runs, but the way we bowled we could have had 180 on the board.
“Possibly, when we were batting first, the ball got stuck in the wicket a little bit, a brand new wicket. Then maybe it skidded on under the lights a little bit more.
“The bottom line is we were under par with the bat and, when you’re under par with the bat, you have to bowl pretty well to defend it, but unfortunately we weren’t at the races.
“We actually dragged it back at one stage, so it was a bit of a shame that we let it slip at the end.
“We’ll have a little chat about it, but we won’t dwell on it too much because you can’t do that in T20.
“We’ve got a game over in Worcester on Sunday – go there, aim to put in a good performance and hopefully pick up two points.”
Notts Outlaws squad to face Worcestershire Rapids (from): Jake Ball, Luke Fletcher, Will Gidman, Harry Gurney, Alex Hales, Ben Hilfenhaus, Steven Mullaney, Samit Patel, Darren Sammy, Greg Smith, Brendan Taylor, James Taylor, Riki Wessels and Sam Wood.
Notts Outlaws NatWest T20 Blast Fixtures & Ticket Information
v Northants Steelbacks – Saturday 27 June 2.30pm BUY TICKETS
v Worcestershire Rapids – Friday 3 July 6.30pm BUY TICKETS
v Derbyshire Falcons – Friday 10 July 6.30pm BUY TICKETS
Need more information? Call our ticket office on 0844 8118711.