WILTSHIRE captain Ed Young has asked his side to be more ruthless in future after they produced a sensational final-day run chase to snatch victory against Devon in their Unicorns Championship Western Division contest.

Having been put behind the eight-ball from the off, as they lost the toss and were sent out into the field, Wiltshire faced a first-innings deficit of 44 after a dogged 132 in 235 balls from Devon’s Matthew Thompson pushed the home side up to 337-8.

In reply, the visitors fell to 293 all out as Wayne White claimed seven first-innings wickets.

And with Devon building a steady lead in the second half of the game, in-form bowler Tahir Afridi took a five-for to restrict the hosts to 207 all out – a lead of 251 – in the early stages of Tuesday’s third and final day.

Wiltshire were seemingly romping towards their target at 160-1 before rain stopped play, sucking precious minutes from the visitors’ run chase.

And once play resumed, Wiltshire lost three wickets for 23 runs as Devon sensed an opening, however, Bradley Dawson and Afridi guided their team home in the closing stages to make it two wins from three for Wiltshire in the longer format this season.

Reflecting on his side’s four-wicket victory and a dramatic final day’s play, Wiltshire captain Ed Young said: “It was an absolutely fantastic win. The guys were brilliant, full credit to all of them.

“First of all, to lose the toss on a pretty flat track was disappointing. After that, to be honest, Devon were in the driving seat for pretty much two full days.

“We managed to get ourselves back into the game in the third innings where Tahir (Afridi) just bowled brilliantly.

“We took our chances and managed to peg them back and suddenly we were in a position to chase 250 to win, which we thought was doable on that pitch.

“It did start to spin a little bit towards the end of the match but not too much to really cause us problems.

“The guys just dug in and got us a really, really good win.”

After a disappointing 2018 in the longer format where they won two of their six games and accumulated just nine batting points, Wiltshire find themselves third in the Unicorns Championship Western Division this year and in hot pursuit of leaders Berkshire, having already equalled their batting bonus point total from last season.

Young has been impressed by the strides his team have made with the bat this term, but the county captain is keen to develop a ruthless streak now as they aim to put pressure on 2016 and 2017 champions, Berkshire.

Discussing Wiltshire’s efforts with the bat against Devon, Young said: “Both times with the bat we got ourselves into good positions.

“In the second innings we were 160-1 thanks to a really good partnership with the bat between Jake (Goodwin) and Uzi (Qureshi) and in the first innings we were 180-3 when Uzi and I were batting together.

“To be hyper critical, we’d like to push on from there and get bigger scores and win games by six or seven wickets.

“That’s the next stage for us. It’s great that we have got another win but now it’s about when we have those moments where it looks like we have the advantage, can we be really ruthless and kill the game off completely?”