Cricket: Twose keeps on toes to ensure win

Lancashire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .392 and 194

Warwickshire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .407 and 183-4

Warwickshire win by 6 wickets

DERMOT REEVE, Warwickshire's captain, acknowledges that winning all four titles this summer 'is not an impossible dream', with much justification. Reeve's precautionary rest through a groin strain prompted his non-contribution to the latest brick in a potential road paved with gold.

Warwickshire, joint top of the Sunday League, Benson and Hedges Cup finalists against Worcestershire at Lord's on Saturday and facing a second-round NatWest Trophy match at Leicester tomorrow, have just swept into the top four of the Championship.

They even achieved it without Reeve, Paul Smith and the multi-accumulator Brian Lara, with knee trouble, but all should return against Leicestershire. It was the 'other lefthander', Roger Twose, who rushed Warwickshire to success, making 90 from 143 balls, laced with 11 fours and two sixes beneath threatening skies.

Twose, from Torquay, has an unbeaten 277 against Glamorgan behind him already this summer, in Lara's debut match, of all things. Lara managed only 147 in that game and significantly fewer at Leicester in his previous appearance there on the West Indies tour in 1991. He scored a meagre three and 26, batting at four, two places higher than Viv Richards. Retribution time seems nigh.

Lara would have admired the spirit of Twose's dismissal - attempting to loft the ball over midwicket and being bowled when needing 10 to complete a hundred with Warwickshire requiring only nine for victory. A six and a four, in either order, were clearly in his mind, especially with rain threatening.

Two balls after Twose was dismissed, Jason Ratcliffe innocuously cross-batted a return catch to Mike Watkinson to complete his strange match, having made a motorway dash on the first morning from Cardiff, where he had been due to play in a Bain Clarkson match, until Lara and Paul Smith withdrew.