Dimi's timely performance

The all-rounder's 55 from 31 balls was the deciding factor in Hampshire's fourth win in five completed totesport national league games this season

And with the England squad for the triangular series against New Zealand and the West Indies set to be named tomorrow, Mascarenhas could not have timed his third half-century of the season in one-day cricket any better.

When he arrived at the crease in the 37th over, the Hawks were 148 for 3.

And when he was finally out in the last over of the Hampshire innings another 85 runs had been added - and Mascarenhas had smashed 55 of them.

For once his bowling was not up to the high standards he has set himself in the National League at the Rose Bowl in recent seasons.

But 242 always looked too big a total for the Warwickshire Bears, despite the visitors' impressive lower-order hitting on one of the best one-day tracks seen at a sun-drenched Rose Bowl this season.

Neil Carter had set the tempo at the top of the order with a run-a-ball 29 but he was dismissed shortly after hooking Chris Tremlett for six.

Then Shane Warne and Shaun Udal gradually worked their way through the top order on a wicket that became increasingly spin-friendly.

Warne, who had won the toss, beat Ian Bell with a top spinner but his compatriot Brad Hogg dragged Warwickshire back into the match with 39 off just 31 balls before Nic Pothas made amends for an earlier missed stumping.

Hogg and Dougie Brown kept Warwickshire hopes alive by putting on 66 in just eight overs for the seventh wicket while Jim Troughton, who came in at number nine a year after playing for England, also scored at a healthy strike rate.

But Tremlett stopped them matching Mascarenhas's pyrotechnics with 4 for 37, and when Alan Mullally returned to bowl Dewald Pretorius, Hampshire had won 28 runs.

Hampshire had amassed their highest National League score at the Rose Bowl since Derek Kenway, John Crawley and Simon Katich contributed to a total of 248 for 3 against the Somerset Sabres in May 2003.

On that occasion Crawley and Kenway put on 138 for the first wicket. Yesterday they put on 80 for Hampshire's second after James Hamblin had been trapped leg before with the fifth ball of the match for a duck.

Kenway made 41 from 55 balls, his highest one-day score of the season, before he was out to a brilliant one-handed diving catch by Ian Clifford, who was playing his first one day game for two years following a finger injury to Warwickshire's second choice gloveman Tony Frost.

Crawley went on to make 68 from 111 balls in his first one day innings of the season and put on 68 in 15 overs with Michael Clarke before he was caught at the wicket by Clifford.

Crawley brought up his 50 by hitting the first ball from off spinner Mark Wagh for six over long off. And Clarke reached his third half-century in four national League innings in similar fashion, hitting left armer Hogg over the mid-wicket boundary, having already driven Troughton for six over long on.

He was handed a huge let off when, having scored 34, he chipped Bell straight to Troughton at mid-wicket.

Troughton threw the ball in the air in celebration before he was in control of it and, when he failed to hold on, umpires Mark Benson and Roy Palmer had little choice but to give Clarke not out.

Clarke went on to follow up his 68 at Edgbaston six weeks ago with his second one day fifty against Warwickshire.

But it was the arrival of Mascarenhas that really accelerated the Hampshire innings.

He needed only 31 balls for his 55 and hit two sixes, two off Brown and one off Pretorius in an exhilarating knock.

Mascarenhas helped Clarke smash 34 off three overs before the latter came down the wicket to Hogg and missed a straight one for a run-a-ball 54.

Lawrie Prittipaul and Pothas both kept Mascarenhas company as the all rounder helped add another 57 runs in the last five before he holed out to Pretorius at long off having scored his first National League fifty of the season.

It proved decisive.