DARYL Mitchell has clocked up his second significant milestone of the season in becoming Worcestershire’s leading run-scorer in T20 cricket.

The 33-year-old County-born ace became only the 25th player to score 10,000 first-class runs for the New Road club earlier in the campaign.

Now he has surpassed Moeen Ali as their top run-getter in the shortest format of the game in which he started out primarily as a bowler who could bat a little and now opens as in red-ball cricket.

But at the forefront of Mitchell’s mind is helping Rapids, who host Lancashire Lightning on Friday after playing Derbyshire Falcons today (both 5.30pm), to qualify for the last eight from the North Group this season.

He said: “I didn’t know about (the T20 record). To be delighted about it you’ve got to know about it first of all! Obviously it’s nice.

“I came into the team at the right time when T20 was just kicking off. 

“I started off as a bowler who probably batted a bit, probably a similar role to what Barny (Ed Barnard) and George Rhodes are playing now when I first started.

“I came in as a youngster, decent in the field, bowled a few overs here and there and batted down the order.

“I worked my way up as time went on and scored some runs. I’ve opened the batting for the last three or four years since Vikram (Solanki) left. 

“Mo playing for England regularly also helped me to move up the order. It’s nice to be on top I guess. 

“Mo and Vik scored a lot of runs in T20 when it first kicked off.

"They are two very good players and if still playing T20 regularly would have scored a lot more runs than I have.

"But it’s nice to just nick past them.”

Mitchell says Rapids have to produce better performance than in the opening two matches which ended in comprehensive home defeats to Birmingham Bears and Leicestershire Foxes.

He added: “It was a disappointing start, losing the first two games.

"In previous years, particularly in 2016, we’ve started very strongly and tailed off. 

“Hopefully this year we can do it the other way.

"We’ve started poorly but hopefully we can gradually build up and get ourselves into a quarter-final.”

WORCESTERSHIRE'S T20 LEADING SCORERS

1,921 Mitchell, 1,890 Moeen, 1,472 Solanki, 1,201 Graeme Hick, 935 Alexei Kervezee, 915 Tom Kohler-Cadmore, 879 Stephen Moore, 874 Ross Whiteley, 866 Ben Smith, 767 Ben Cox.