Shropshire’s director of cricket Karl Krikken believes there’s no reason why his side should not recover quickly from an opening defeat in the Unicorns Knockout Trophy.
A fine display from Staffordshire captain Kadeer Ali, who took three wickets before hitting an unbeaten 80, helped the visitors pull off an eight-wicket win at Shrewsbury’s London Road ground.
But Shropshire still have three group games left as they start to prepare for Sunday’s trip to Oxton to face Cheshire in the 50-over competition.
Matches with Wales at Oswestry and last year’s winners Herefordshire at Brockhampton will follow next month.
Shropshire, who gave debuts to former Worcestershire paceman Chris Russell and youngsters Dillon Pennington and wicketkeeper George Hargrave, well well placed at 105-1 against Staffordshire before being dismissed for 160.
Krikken said: “Cheshire are always a decent one-day side. One of the lads that I had at Derby, Wayne White, is there.
“I’m looking forward to it and there’s no reason why we can’t go on and win the three games that are left – but we’ve got to be better than we have with the bat.”
Opener Ollie Westbury top-scored for Shropshire with 62 and Krikken stressed his performance was one of the day’s positives.
“There were some good performances,” he said. “Westbury played quite nicely and I thought our bowling as a whole was quite good and I thought our fielding was decent.
“I’m not so disappointed because I think there was structure there today, so going into the game against Cheshire we’ve got a few positives and we’ll take it with us.”
Krikken added: “I don’t think the team will change much for the next game. We’ve just got to learn from our mistakes and go forward.”