ATTENDANCE figures for Worcestershire Rapids’ home games in the North Group of the NatWest T20 Blast this season are up 24 per cent on the 2014 figures.

A total of 20,640 spectators watched the six completed matches at New Road, compared to 13,381 for the five games played last summer.

It has been a vindication of the Rapids’ ITV1 advert, which ran in 30 different slots prior to the tournament, harnessed to the exciting brand of cricket played by skipper Daryl Mitchell and his side in reaching the quarter-finals and good weather.

Worcestershire commercial director Jon Graham said: “In 2014, we launched the Rapids and it just felt a line had been drawn on the previous ten years and we were looking at something completely different, completely fresh.

“People bought into that but it is always like the successful first album, it’s what you do with the second one, and the TV advert massively helped. It is no coincidence, I don’t believe in coincidences.

“This year we’ve gone and spoken to more people through that media, and the fact we are 24 per cent up and let’s be right, the previous year was pretty solid, so to be that far up on a very good year is phenomenal.

“We feel vindicated regarding the decisions we’ve made on promotion of the competition, when we’ve done it, how we’ve gone about it, and what we’ve done with the pricing, which is not change anything.

“All those things with the lads playing well and the weather being pretty good, everything has been pushing in the right direction and given us that lift in ticket sales.

“I was pretty confident it was going to happen and I’m really pleased it has been that way.

"I think yet again we are one of the stand-out counties and maybe three years ago we couldn’t have said that.

“We’ve turned a massive corner in three years and I’m a big believer in if you look in the scorebook, you can’t argue with that in terms of the numbers we are producing and long may it continue.”

Meanwhile, Moeen Ali, who will be playing for Worcestershire tomorrow, has made a significant contribution to England’s Ashes success with the bat — despite featuring at number eight or nine throughout the opening four Tests.

The 28-year-old is England’s second highest run-scorer in the series ahead of next week’s final Test at The Oval.

Moeen has scored 228 runs in six knocks at an average of 38.00, with a highest score of 77 in the opening Test at the Swalec Stadium.

On the bowling front, Moeen has taken nine wickets in the opening four Tests — with a best match haul of five for 130 at Cardiff.

His overall figures are 9-444 from 105.4 overs at 49.33 runs with an economy rate of 4.20 and a strike-rate of 70.4