WORCESTERSHIRE Royals maintained their poor start to the campaign as they slid to a seven-wicket New Road defeat against Yorkshire Carnegie in Clydesdale Bank 40 Group ‘A’.

With their only success of in the competition at Kent, the New Road side are now cut adrift at the bottom of their table.

Worcestershire haven’t got many expectations in LV= County Championship Division One, but in the one-day game they would have been hoping for a better start than they have had.

But with this defeat and the innings and 25-run loss to Durham on Saturday in the Championship, Rhodes faces a difficult job of keeping his team’s spirits up.

Before last week’s losses to Middlesex and Yorkshire, in the CB40, and Durham in the four-day format, Worcester-shire had been making teams work hard for their victories.

But having seen the top order blown away yesterday, Worcestershire had to rely on James Cameron and 17-year-old Aneesh Kapil to save them from what would have been an embarrassing total in this CB40 clash.

Cameron, who is the Roy-als leading scorer in this competition, and A-level student Kapil came together with the County 30-4 after just nine overs, but after rotating the strike nicely the duo figured in an 88-run fifth-wicket stand.

Kapil, who made his Bir-mingham League debut for Wolverhampton aged 13, deserved a half-century on his competitive bow for Worcestershire but fell six short when he was trapped lbw by Adil Rashid.

Cameron, however, was not going to be denied his third CB40 50 in succession before falling shortly after hitting Gary Patterson straight to Gary Ballance, who had put him down in the previous over.

Worcestershire were now 137-7 in the 36th over and in danger of committing the cardinal sin of not batting their full 40 overs.

In-form on-loan wicketkeeper Ben Scott went in the following over for just seven before Chris Whelan was dismissed in the 39th.

Shaaiq Choudhry and Jack Shantry managed to see out the final six balls but Wor-cestershire’s total of 155-9 was nowhere near enough for the County to defend.

After getting the visitors off to a good start with a 59-run opening partnership in 11 overs, Ballance was stum-ped by Scott off Choudhry for 27.

However, that did not stop Yorkshire cruising to only their second victory of the season in CB40.

Captain Adam Gale (56) and Adam Lyth (49) put Yorkshire in a winning position despite a good spell of fast bowling from Kapil.