Diligent Northants off bottom

Notts 489 and 172 v Northants 420 and 242-4 Northamptonshire win by 6 wkts

A first Championship win of the season lifted Northamptonshire off the bottom of the Second Division and ended an undignified sequence of five consecutive defeats.

That they needed it is not in doubt but what will encourage them is the manner of their triumph. Good, simple cricket executed with enthusiasm and diligence. Runs are rarely a problem at Wantage Road. The pitch is so flat that after a few hours the stumps start to look less like a target for the bowlers than a headstone and what good pitches demand are centuries, big centuries and Northamptonshire have three batters with triple-centuries in the past four seasons.

Mike Hussey may have failed in this match but David Sales and Malachy Loye did not. Indeed they both reached three figures in the first innings and Loye completed the win by carrying his bat for another in the second. Runs are not the problem so it must be the bowling, or a poor attitude. Whatever it has been, it was not evident in this match and the clue might be the influence that the two off-spinners had.

Graeme Swann and Jason Brown have flirted with and been rejected by England, but this match was won by them on Friday. Good, dry pitches will wear and turn but still the bowler has to work hard for reward. Brown and Swann had combined figures of 6 for 113 in 41 overs and after Carl Greenidge had wrapped up the remaining resistance, the target was only 242.

If the target had been 100 more, then Nicky Boje, Nottinghamshire's South African left-arm tweaker, would probably have been the match winner. That is why the return to form of Swann and Brown, and they do seem to hunt as a pair, is vital to Northamptonshire's hopes.

In 2000 they were promoted to the First Division and the spin duo took 98 wickets at 28 runs each but last season they were relegated and they managed only 58 at an average of 48.

These figures do not lie. As a pair they are match winners. Give them plenty of runs on the board and they will tease and torment the opposition, aided of course by the light-fingered Fagins that surround the bat, snaffling chances and whispering doubts in the batsmen's ear.

With the hard-working Darren Cousins fit again and a whole legion of seamers imported to support him, they should bowl teams out. But, and this is the problem, only if the spinners bowl well. More sunshine, more runs and more confidence after this win seem to be the ingredients needed for more success, and if they fail then they will have to undergo a brutally honest examination of why not. Languishing near the bottom of the Second Division demands nothing less.