Cork aiming to end season on a high note

Dominic Cork has challenged the side to end their season with a strong performance when they face Yorkshire in the Vitality Blast on Sunday 20 September. 

The Falcons’ disappointing eight-wicket defeat to Notts Outlaws at Trent Bridge was their sixth loss in the competition. with Tuesday’s victory over Leicestershire the sole victory so far.

However, they will travel to Emerald Headingley on Sunday to face Yorkshire Vikings side who are second-from-bottom in the North Group after suffering four-successive Vitality Blast defeats, ending their hopes of progressing to the quarter-finals.

Twenty20 Head Coach, Cork has been frustrated by the Vitality Blast campaign, but wants the Derbyshire squad to put in a positive performance to end it in Leeds on Sunday.

“We had a frank discussion (after the Notts defeat) about what we are going to do going forward,” Cork told BBC Radio Derby.

“We’ve got one game left, so let’s try to finish it off with a win, and look ahead to the future of Twenty20, because they’ve got to be honest with themselves and get better, both individually and as a team.

“We’ll turn up on Sunday against a Yorkshire side who will likely have a few internationals, and we’ve got to look for a combination where we put the batting, bowling and fielding together, work hard and try to win the game.

“As I’ll always say, they’re professional cricketers, they’re playing for Derbyshire, they have a badge on their shirts and there are fans who want to see them beat sides, and they’ve got one more game, so we’ll turn up again and be ready to go.”

Addressing the loss to Notts Outlaws, Cork was critical of the Falcons’s performance at Trent Bridge, and wants to see an improvement in the final game of he campaign.

“It wasn’t a very good performance tonight from start to finish.,” he added.

We tried to tinker with the batting line-up and have a right hand/left hand combination at the top but obviously that didn’t work on a pitch that we needed to take a little bit more time on.

“It was a hybrid pitch but we know how they play, we were only here on Sunday. After encouragement with our win on Tuesday there’s still a lot of work to do with some very young players and some players who need to get better.

“We’ll send them out again (at Emerald Headingley) and hopefully we’ll be able to put that combination of batting, bowling and fielding together better than we have done in the last three weeks.”

Vitality Blast is back! Derbyshire Falcons return to Twenty20. Follow every game live on our match centre at derbyshireccc.com. Derbyshire Falcons: Underestimated No More.