ON the day that Trent Johnston announced his retirement date from the Ireland team, Phil Eaglestone put his hand up to replace him with a superb opening spell to set up the Northern Knights' two wickets victory over the North West Warriors in their Inter-provincial Cup match at Comber.

At one stage, Eaglestone, the Waringstown left arm pace bowler had figures of 8-5-5-3 after taking three wickets in his first four overs to reduce the Warriors to 11 for three. Thanks to a defiant 52 by David Rankin and a whirlwind 86, off 82 balls with 10 fours and four sixes, from Brigade's Johnny Thompson at No 8, the Warriors recovered to post 232 for nine in their 50 overs.

The North West side, however, are still looking for their first win of the series as Andrew White again proved the immovable object, the Knights captain finishing 64 not out.

The home side made victory a lot more difficult than it should have been. In the 42nd over they needed only 27 to win but contrived to lose three wickets for 18 runs, using up six overs, with player/coach Eugene Moleon holing out to long-on, two balls after he had been dropped at long-off with just nine needed from 15 balls.

It exposed No 10 David Simpson but when he hit his first ball into the covers, Stuart Thompson ambitiously tried to run out White at the non-strikers' end; he missed and the ball went for four overthrows to finish the match.

The teams are joined at Comber by Leinster Lightning for today's Twenty20 Blitz. The first match is at 11am.