An astonishing reversal in fortunes, sparked off by Gavin Hamilton and Richard Blakey and completed with a flourish by Chris Silverwood, brought Yorkshire victory by three wickets over Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge yesterday.

In a remarkable game packed with poor cricket but still full of incident, Yorkshire looked to have blown it at 43 for six as they chased a 144 target.

But then Hamilton and Blakey refused to get tied down like the earlier batsmen had done and they opened out with some fine shots in a 68 stand in 14 overs.

Blakey's departure to a ball from former Yorkshire colleague Alex Wharf which knocked back his off stump seemed to have put Notts right back in the match but Silverwood launched a furious assault to smack 25 off 14 balls with two sixes and two fours.

The game ended in sensational style when Notts called up newly capped West Indian all-rounder Vasbert Drakes to relieve Paul Franks in the 44th over with Yorkshire on 122 for seven.

Silverwood smashed his first two deliveries for enormous legside sixes and took a single off the next to leave Hamilton to off-drive a boundary and run another single.

The final delivery was a full toss which Silverwood on drove for four to make it 22 runs off the over to win the match.

Yorkshire took 16 points from the game to consolidate their position in the top half of the championship table and went a long way towards safeguarding them from a drop into the new second division next season.

It was a win Yorkshire hardly deserved in view of their dismal batting but it was still a remarkable achievement after being reduced to 39 for five in their first innings after Notts had made 184 on the controversial pitch.

This was the subject of close scrutiny yesterday from the ECB pitch panel, chaired by former England Mike Denness, and they deliberated after the game over whether Nottinghamshire should be docked points for preparing a strip on which 17 wickets toppled on the first day - and 16 yesterday.

Notts started out on six for one and Silverwood soon had Tim Robinson wafting a catch to Blakey before distinguishing himself on the square leg boundary with a brilliant catch when Paul Johnson picked up a legside ball from Hamilton.

It was not until Craig White entered the attack, however, that Yorkshire began to make serious inroads and he destroyed the middle-order with three wickets for three runs in 13 balls, finishing with four for 32 and match figures of eight for 76.

Hamilton collected three for 29 to give him an even better match analysis of eight for 59.

The rot set in early for Yorkshire as Vaughan top edged an ungainly pull at Franks and wickets continued to fall because timid batsmen seemed rooted to the crease, allowing Notts to tighten their strangle-hold.Yet Notts were equally guilty of tossing away the advantage and once Hamilton and Blakey set about them they quickly fell apart.

Yorkshire skipper David Byas said: "No praise is too high for the way that Silverwood set about the bowling. It was a marvellous piece of batting which won us the match after Blakey and Hamilton had gone a long way to retrieving a difficult situation.

"We have still got three games to play and if we pull ourselves together and win them all we are in with a shout of finishing second in the table."

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