Yorkshire Phoenix crashed to their third consecutive Totesport League defeat when they were comprehensively outplayed by Warwickshire Bears who beat them by seven wickets at Scarborough yesterday.

It was a particularly disappointing display in front of a 5,000-strong crowd and although Yorkshire still have games in hand, their promotion chances will soon slip away if there are more performances like this one.

Having struggled to make 201 for seven on a slow pitch against tight bowling, Yorkshire were then blasted out of the game by Warwickshire opener, Neil Carter, who lashed 65 off only 38 balls with six soaring sixes and five fours.

The onslaught completely knocked the stuffing out of Yorkshire, who were never in the game from that point on, and Warwickshire cruised home with seven-and-a-half overs to spare.

Carter began by clipping Deon Kruis's second ball of the innings for six over square leg and in the following over he smacked David Lucas high over the covers and into the crowd. Most of his other big hits were in the long leg area but it was in attempting to drive Kruis out of the ground that he eventually spooned a catch to Anthony McGrath at mid-on.

Carter had put on 82 in 13 overs with his captain and fellow left-hander, Nick Knight, who fell attempting a reverse sweep off Dawson which he played straight into the hands of Ian Harvey, but Warwickshire refused to go into their shell and shoddy bowling enabled Jonathan Trott and Jim Troughton to amble their way to a 98 stand for the third wicket.

Trott cruised to a faultless 50 and Troughton looked like following him to the landmark until he was caught behind by Ismail Dawood attempting to drive Tim Bresnan.

Alex Loudon hit the winning boundary to leave Trott unbeaten on 58 from 84 balls with seven fours.

Yorkshire had made hard work of batting after being inserted on a slow pitch but Matthew Wood and Harvey gave them a solid start of 41 in ten overs before Wood fell lbw to Dougie Brown.

Harvey boosted the scoring with four sweetly struck fours in one over from Dewald Pretorius but Carter then struck a double blow by getting Phil Jaques caught in the slips and having Harvey caught behind for 47 off as many balls with nine boundaries.

It was Michael Lumb, pictured left, who carefully held the innings together with his third consecutive half-century in the competition and he had reached 57 when he was lbw to Trott.

Anthony McGrath spent 35 balls making 19 and it was only some nimble work by Ismail Dawood who hit an unbeaten 28 off 22 balls that pushed Yorkshire past the 200 mark which was soon shown to be an inadequate total once Carter broke loose.

There was some unacceptable rowdyism among a section of the crowd below the main North Marine Road gates and one spectator was ejected by Police when he invaded the field with an Osama bin Laden mask covering his face and with a rucksack over on his back.

He attempted to strike up a conversation with Dawson who sensibly turned his back on the man and a couple of minutes went by before he was led off by stewards.

Yorkshire's director of cricket, Geoff Cope, said: "There will be discussions between Scarborough CC, Yorkshire and the safety authorities over what happened and we will seek advice and assurance that there will not be a similar occurrence."

Scarborough chairman, Bill Mustoe, said: "We find the person who invaded the pitch dressed as a terrorist particularly offensive and in the current climate this was utterly tasteless."

Updated: 11:20 Monday, July 25, 2005