Rob White lifts Northants towards crunch game against Derbyshire

Northamptonshire kept alive their chances of qualifying for the quarter-finals of the Friends Provident t20 with an 11-run win against Lancashire on a sullen and windswept night at Wantage Road. But they will have little time to celebrate with only 24 hours before they face Derbyshire in Derby in another match where victory is essential. One of the more unsung matches in this season's T20 has much riding on it. If Derbyshire beat Northants, they will join Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire and Lancashire in the quarter-finals on 26 July. But a Northants victory would take them a point ahead of Derbyshire in fourth place, leaving everything resting on the final group games. Derbyshire's final home game is against Yorkshire on Sunday while Northants must travel further north to Durham, whose second-bottom position has provided the shock under-performance of the North Group. A small crowd under glowering skies hardly told of a group stage reaching its culmination, emphasising yet again that the counties have sorely miscalculated in expanding Twenty20 cricket way beyond its optimum size. County chairmen are now agitating for a shorter, more intense competition, just as a year ago they were still convinced that there was an appetite for more fixtures. Their confused leadership has long been beyond belief. If the predicted rain had fallen, Northants' chances would have been diminished but it stayed away. An opening stand of 77 in nearly 12 overs between Rob White and Chaminda Vaas did not inspire confidence, but it proved perfectly judged as White strode on to 80 from 58 balls, enabling Northants to post 170 for six. Lancashire had qualified for the last eight the previous night, although the incentive of a quarter-final tie at Old Trafford for finishing in the top two still remained. As they slipped to 109 for six in the 17th over, it did not seem incentive enough. By the time that Gareth Cross and Sajid Mahmood thrashed 50 from the last 22 balls it was all far too late. "I felt we were up for this game," said Mark Chilton, Lancashire's captain, but they had done little to prove it. Warwickhire need a point from their last two games to be certain of a home semi-final Nottinghamshire are already guaranteed a home tie in the last eight thanks to Lancashire's defeat, although they, too, did nothing to earn it last night, losing at Trent Bridge to Leicestershire by 23 runs under the D/L method on a rain-disrupted night. The Australian Andrew McDonald overcame Notts virtually single-handedly in one of the outstanding individual performances of the season. McDonald's 58 from 44 balls took Leicestershire to 145 for five and then he returned five for 13, his best figures in 39 T20 matches, as Notts subsided. There was one game in the South Group and Essex reached the quarter-finals by overhauling Gloucestershire 's 162 for five by seven wickets with eight balls remaining, bolstered by an opening stand of 119 by two international batsmen currently overlooked by England in Twenty20, Alastair Cook and Ravi Bopara. They join Somerset and Sussex in the last eight. A Hampshire victory against Middlesex at the Rose Bowl tonight would make them strong favourites to outlast Surrey for the final qualifying spot.