A RAPID opening stand of 62 in only eight overs between Matthew Wood and Stephen Fleming gave bottom club Yorkshire Phoenix early hope that they could pull off a shock win against Second Division table-toppers Gloucestershire Gladiators at Cheltenham.

But once Fleming had miscued a drive at James Averis, Yorkshire went rapidly downhill and their completely inadequate total of 183 was overhauled for the loss of only two wickets with 12.2 overs remaining.

Gloucestershire went for the runs from the start with New Zealander Craig Spearman and Phil Weston piling up 143 in 24 overs, a record opening stand for the county in National League games against Yorkshire.

Matthew Wood must have felt his luck was in when he won the toss on a glorious day and the capacity crowd looked to be in for a high scoring encounter as Wood and Fleming both dished out heavy punishment on Averis.

Wood appeared in particularly good nick, two backfoot drives for four being straight out of the textbook, and Fleming also seemed full of runs until he lofted an attempted legside hit and Alex Gidman held on to a good catch in the sun at deep mid-off.

Yuvraj Singh's lean patch continued when he drilled back a catch to the economical Mark Alleyne and Wood was caught down the legside by Jack Russell for 38 from 43 balls with six fours when trying to hook a short one from Averis.

Michael Lumb and Craig White tried to repair the damage with a 50 stand in 15 overs but after making 28 the left-hander hit across the line at Dewsbury-born Mike Smith and was lbw.

Suddenly, the height of Yorkshire's ambition was to try to top 200 and bat out the overs but the task was virtually beyond them when Craig White and Richard Blakey were crazily run out in the space of four balls from Smith.

Chris Silverwood put in some testing early overs but Steve Kirby was all over the place and Spearman and Weston hammered him for 42 in four overs before he gave way to Vic Craven.

But nothing Yorkshire attempted could staunch the flow of runs as the openers made it a century stand in the 19th over and there was more grief when Silverwood spilled Weston on 47 in the same over from Dawson in which each batsman completed half centuries.

Dawson was collared for 38 in five overs and it was Andy Gray who eventually broke the stand when Weston went for a slog-sweep and was out to a sprawling catch by Yuvraj running in from deep mid-wicket. He had hit 62 from 72 balls with ten fours.

White came on for his first bowl in a month but his off-spin proved to no avail.