Carter hounds the Foxes

• 25/07/2010

The Warwickshire Bears resumed their Clydesdale Bank 40 over campaign with a twenty five run victory over the Leicestershire Foxes at Grace Road, to stay top of Group C

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The Foxes won the toss and put the Bears into bat at Grace Road when the CB40 competiton resumed after the mid-term break for the t20 leagues.

Neil Carter and Darren Maddy got the Bears off to a strong start, posting forty four runs in run-a-ball fashion until Maddy got under an attempted drive off Nathan Buck, to sky a catch to Matthew Hoggard at deep mid-on for sixteen.

Keith Barker was next to go with no adddition to the total, when lbw to Naik missing a straight delivery as he attempted to sweep.

When Jim Troughton chopped Hoggard back into his middle stump for ten, the Bears had lost three wickets for twenty one, negating the earlier strong start.

A  century partnership between Carter, who completed his fifty and Ian Westwood, 47, put Warwickshire back into a commanding position and despite losing Westwood to the first ball of the batting powerplay in the thirty first over, Carter went on to complete a superb century with consecutive boundaries off Taylor, who hit back when bowling the left-hander with the next ball.

Rikki Clarke 14 was given out lbw and Chris Woakes made a useful thirteen, but it was Ant Botha 42, with some superb late order hitting, including three sixes and three fours, that helped the Bears post an impressive 272-8 from their forty overs, as they battled to hang on to their top spot in the Division.

James Taylor ended with four wickets for the Foxes.

In reply, James Benning hit a rapid forty six for the Foxes after Carter had bowled du Toit for seven. Slipping behind the asking rate, and becoming increasingly frantic in his approach, Benning was finally clean bowled by the impressive Boyd Rankin, who then had McDonald 7, well caught at mid-on by Botha.

James Taylor and Matthew Boyce added sixty one for the fourth wicket, but Boyce 33, pulled Carter and his mistimed shot looped to Barker, while despite sharing in a stand of seventy with Taylor, Wayne White never looked in touch before he too, gave Botha an easy catch off Barker.

While all this was going on Taylor continued to find ways of accelerating the scoring rate and despite never looking to be in with any realistic chance of chasing the total down, he refused to give up until the final over proved it mathematically impossible for his side to win. Looking to be stranded on ninety nine with one ball to go and the match lost, he haired down the wicket to get on strike for the last ball and despite very confident appeals for his run out from all of the Bears' players, the umpire took the lenient view, allowing him to hit the final ball for four and thus bring up a well earned century as the Foxes went down by twenty five runs.