YORKSHIRE’S NatWest T20 Blast quarter-final hopes are all but over after suffering a seventh defeat from 12 matches last night as Worcestershire secured a comfortable 74-run win at Headingley.

Ross Whiteley’s blistering career-best 91 not out off 35 balls, including a whopping 11n sixes, underpinned the Rapids 191-6 after they had elected to bat on a good pitch.

Yorkshire only made 117 in reply as they were bowled out in17 overs. Although they are not mathematically out of the last eight running, it would take a miracle for them to advance with two matches to play.

Left-handed Whiteley shared a partnership of 61 inside seven overs for the fifth wicket with Daryl Mitchell (49) after the visitors had slipped to 63-4 in the tenth over.

He also added 28 in 13 balls with Ben Cox for the sixth wicket and 39 unbroken from the last 11 balls of the innings for the seventh with Joe Leach, who only made one.

Yorkshire struck four times in the first half of the innings thanks to wickets for Liam Plunkett and Matthew Fisher and two for Will Rhodes, the pick of the home bowlers with 2-30 from four overs.

Plunkett and Rhodes had success in their first overs, with the latter getting New Zealand overseas all-rounder Colin Munro caught behind in the eighth over.

He then had Brett D’Oliveira caught at long-leg in the tenth.

Rhodes’ figures were spoilt somewhat by conceding two leg-side sixes to Whiteley in the 14th over, which went for 15, as Worcester went beyond 100.

The Mitchell and Whiteley alliance was broken in the 16th over when the former was bowled by Plunkett at 124-5.

Whiteley hit debutant Ryan Gibson for two more leg-side sixes in his only over, the 17th, on the way to a 24-ball fifty and smashed Plunkett for three to long-on and long-off in the penultimate over which went for 23 runs and yielded a wicket.

In the 19th and 20th overs, bowled by Plunkett and Fisher, he even hit four sixes and a four in a run of five legitimate balls.

Yorkshire got their chase off to a positive start with two straight sixes for Alex Lees in Jack Shantry’s first over, although the left-hander fell to Pakistan off-spinner Saeed Ajmal in the third over with 27 on the board.

Rhodes was run out in the fifth as the Vikings slipped to 43-2.

Home hopes were then seriously undermined with the loss of four wickets for nine runs in 18 balls between the eighth and 11th overs.

In-form Jonny Bairstow chipped Mitchell’s medium pace to deep mid-wicket for four and Glenn Maxwell did likewise to D’Oliveira’s leg-spin and was caught at long-off for a golden duck.

Andrew Gale reverse swept D’Oliveira to short third-man later in the ninth, and when Tim Bresnan mistimed the same man to deep mid-wicket in the 11th, Yorkshire were 69-6 and all but goners.

D’Oliveira finished with 3-29 from his allocation of overs as Yorkshire, who have looked like rabbits caught in the headlights too often in this competition, slumped.

Jack Leaning was top-scorer with 27 off 20 balls.

They face Northamptonshire at Wantage Road on Friday, but that match will almost certainly be academic in the final reckoning.