Cricket: Brown's spirit sees Warwickshire home

Yorkshire 233 and 154 Warwickshire 140 and 249-6 Warwickshire win by four wickets

Yorkshire may see themselves as potential Britannic Assurance champions but will remain merely pretenders so long as opportunities escape them as this one did. Warwickshire, seemingly in a hopeless position at 94 for 5 after the opening half-hour yesterday, passed the target of 248 to win for the loss of only one more wicket. It was an outstanding performance by the home side, notwithstanding the dismal way in which their opponents failed to press home their advantage.

Then again, they have been there before and this victory, achieved with a day and a half to spare, was clear evidence that the indomitable spirit that was their hallmark under Dermot Reeve lives on. Even an injury at a critical stage to Trevor Penney, the highest scorer in the match, did not damage their momentum. Penney sustained heavy bruising after a ball from Chris Silverwood crushed his left index finger and was forced to retire.

He and Dougie Brown had put on 54 in 20 overs, reducing the runs required to less than 100. Brown then took the initiative, despite taking some knocks of his own, to a hand and an elbow. He was dropped on eight, a difficult chance to Michael Vaughan at cover, but otherwise played an admirable innings, spanning almost three hours.

He lost another partner immediately after lunch, when Graeme Welch was bowled by Craig White with 67 still wanted, but found one of more than equal value in Ashley Giles, the left-arm spinner reckoned a contender for the Texaco Trophy squad. Giles demonstrated another side to his talents with 38 off 48 balls, including a couple of fine blows in the same over off Silverwood, whom he crashed to the cover boundary and then whipped away through mid-wicket for four more.

Brown, dropped a second time on 56, finished the job by firing two consecutive on-side boundaries off the flagging Silverwood, taking his tally to 11 fours off 138 balls. And that after he had bowled as well as any of his team-mates, taking five wickets in the match.

If anything, a pitch that had seen 33 wickets fall over the first two days behaved more awkwardly than ever, but Yorkshire could not bowl well enough to force the win that seemed theirs for the taking.

To make the largest total of the match looked too much even for a team as positive in thought as Warwickshire, especially after Gough had opened a grey Birmingham morning with a double breakthrough. Gough yorked Dominic Ostler and then had David Hemp caught behind for 37, the highest score by the former Glamorgan left-hander in 11 innings for his new county. But Yorkshire's performance declined from that point, their fielding becoming untidy, Silverwood struggling to keep a good line and Richard Stemp failing to exploit a turning pitch nearly so effectively as Giles had.