Foxes now out of the Blast picture as Steelbacks edge closer to last eight qualification
Northants Steelbacks have edged closer to Vitality Blast quarter-final qualification, and will go into their final game of the North Group campaign sitting second in the table.
Darren Lehmann's side travel to Durham on Friday night knowing a ninth win of the campaign win will secure a top two finish and a home quarter-final for the second season running.
And they also know that their place in the last eight is so close to being secured, with only a set of unlikely results able to deny them.
The Steelbacks could have been overtaken in the table ahead of Friday night's clash had Durham won their scheduled game in hand on Tuesday night, but the showdown with Leicestershire Foxes at Chester-le-Street was abandoned without a ball being bowled due to rain.
Both sides claimed just the two points, and that means the fifth-placed Foxes can no longer catch the Steelbacks.
The only team outside of the top four who can now mathematically catch Northants is seventh-placed Notts Outlaws, whose run-rate is significanly inferior to that of the Steelbacks.
It means they will have to win both of their remaining games by big margins, and hope that the Steelbacks lose heavily at Durham for there to even be a chance of that happening.
The Outlaws play their game in hand against sixth-placed Worcestershire Rapids on Thursday and then leaders Lancashire Lightning - who can secure their top two finish with a win in the Roses match against Yorkshire at Headingley on Thursday - 24 hours later.
If the Outlaws fail to beat Rapids on Thursday, then the Steelbacks' qualification for the quarter-finals is guaranteed, it will then be all about whether they can secure that County Ground date.
A win over Durham will guarantee that regardless of what anybody else does, as would a tie or an abandonment for rain.
Steelbacks head coach Lehmann though knows his side have to just concentrate on the job in hand, and that is beating Durham.
"If we lose at Durham and miss out then it is our own fault, because it is in our own destiny," he told BBC Northampton's Cricket Show.
"You would be very unlucky to miss out (on the quarter-finals) with eight wins, but it can happen because that is the way it has gone this year.
"We have to just worry about how we are going to prepare to play Durham.
"By that time we will have a better idea of where we sit as well, and everybody will be playing their last game, with some big games in there as well.
"But one thing I do know about the North Group is that anybody can beat anybody else on any given day."