NORTH WEST Warriors are in pole position to end Leinster Lightning’s reign as inter-provincial champions after completing a 10 wickets victory at Comber yesterday.

They need only 23 points from the return game against the Northern Knights at Bready later this month to clinch the Championship crown for the first time and they will be big favourites to do so if they can keep this team together.

Craig Young was the match-winner here as he claimed career best first-class figures of 8-122 to help dismiss the Knights for 209 in their second innings, just in time to leave Warriors with the formality of scoring 14 to win in the remaining seven overs. William Porterfield and Stuart Thompson, with the help of seven extras, needed only nine balls.

For long periods in the afternoon, it looked as if Warriors had missed an opportunity by not declaring on Tuesday night, with the possibility of taking a couple of wickets against a team that had spent nearly 100 overs in the field.

Instead, they opted to bat on yesterday and David Scanlon needed only three balls to bring up his maiden first class 50 and, just for good measure added a six in the next over. Indeed, the No 11 ended 62 not out because it was Graham Kennedy who lost his wicket in the fifth over of the day to a catch on the boundary trying to emulate Scanlon’s big hitting.

When Knights went into bat again, Scanlon struck twice in his first three overs to remove Mark Ellison and the first innings centurion, James McCollum and after Stuart Thompson ended Harry Tector’s 30 overs of defiance – at lunch he had scored three of 56 balls – Young took centre stage.

James Cameron-Dow, promoted to No 5 because of his defensive qualities, was his first victim, a catch at first slip and after Shane Getkate had been snared in the gully, he ended the innings of Chris Dougherty, who had batted 62 overs for his 74 in the first over after tea.

It was a huge psychological blow and, although Phil Eaglestone hit him for two successive boundaries to force Warriors to bat again, fittingly he took the last wicket to give him his third first-class five-wicket haul.