YORKSHIRE Phoenix maintained their good early season form with an emphatic five-wicket victory over Somerset Sabres at Headingley yesterday in Division Two of the totesport League.

Career-best bowling of 4-25 by Tim Bresnan -- his best figures in any competition -- restricted Somerset to 209-9 on a good pitch after they had won the toss.

Australian Phil Jaques then led the run chase with a blistering 84 off 78 balls with eight fours and two sixes before he was run out.

Fellow left-hander, Michael Lumb, also notched his first half century of the season as Yorkshire cantered home with 5.2 overs to spare.

Fielding the same side that thrashed Somerset by an innings in the Championship over the previous three days, Yorkshire once again got rid of Sri Lankan Test star Sanath Jayasuriya cheaply. This time he cut Matthew Hoggard uppishly to backward point where Richard Dawson held an athletic catch.

Hoggard also had Matt Wood neatly picked up at slip by Jaques, but it was Bresnan who went on to have the biggest impact.

He forced both Michael Burns and Keith Parsons to chop balls which nipped back into their stumps and later had Ian Blackwell and Richard Johnson caught in the deep as the lower-order pair tried to step up the momentum.

With Ian Harvey being held back to make quick runs later on if necessary, skipper Craig White opened with Matthew Wood but in Richard Johnson's second over he got a leading edge and chipped a catch to Blackwell at mid-off.

Wood slapped six fours out of 33 before a slower ball from Johnson deceived him into tapping another simple catch to Blackwell.

Jaques was in murderous form to anything pitched short on the leg-stump but he had a fortunate moment on 29 when he lashed Jayasuriya towards the mid-wicket boundary where Burns flung out his left hand, the ball bouncing out and over the rope for six.

Two further legside boundaries at Jayasuriya's expense, raced Jaques to his half century and raised the 100 in the 21st over and the batsman greeted Keith Parsons with two fours in his opening over before pulling him for six.

Lumb was also batting fluently and the third wicket stand had reached 84 in 15 overs when Jaques robbed himself of a century by pushing Caddick on the off-side and setting off for a quick single but he could not beat John Francis' direct throw.

There was no respite for Somerset, however, because Anthony McGrath struck the ball hard while Lumb caressed it around the field on his way to an elegant half-century but after 55 had been added in nine overs, Caddick produced a yorker which hit McGrath's off-stump.

In the next over from Jayasuriya, Lumb was lbw for 57 from 64 balls but Yorkshire were far too near the winning line for it to really matter.

Updated: 10:06 Monday, April 25, 2005