YORKSHIRE'S NatWest T20 Blast hopes are all but extinguished after suffering a seventh defeat from 12 matches as Worcestershire secured a 74-run win at Headingley.

Ross Whiteley's blistering career-best 91 not out off only 35 balls, including 11 sixes, underpinned the Rapids' 191-6 after they had elected to bat.

Yorkshire then lost four wickets for nine runs in 18 balls through the middle of their nightmare innings, including Jonny Bairstow for four and Glenn Maxwell for a golden duck, to slip from 60-2 in the eighth over to 69-6 in the 11th.

Although they are not mathematically out of the last-eight running after totalling 117, it would take a miracle for them to survive with two matches left.

Left-handed Whiteley shared a stand of 61 inside seven overs for the fifth wicket with opener 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.

Will Rhodes was the pick of Yorkshire's bowlers with 2-30 from four overs, although he was not spared the Whiteley assault as his second and third sixes came in the seamer's last over, the 14th.

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

Yorkshire started their chase positively 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 before Rhodes was run out in the fifth, leaving the score at 43-2.

Then came the killer passage of play for their hopes.

Bairstow chipped Mitchell's medium pace to deep mid-wicket and Maxwell did likewise to Brett D'Oliveira's leg-spin and was caught at long-off.

Andrew Gale reverse-swept D'Oliveira (3-29 from four overs) to short third-man later in the ninth before Tim Bresnan mistimed the same man to deep mid-wicket.