WESTERN Storm’s relentless march towards next month’s Kia Super League finals day continued with a fifth straight win, as openers Smriti Mandhana and Rachel Priest demolished a 152 target to beat Yorkshire Diamonds by nine wickets at York’s Clifton Park.

The table-topping Storm initially stymied the Diamonds progress having elected to bowl, with five run outs coming in the last 2.4 overs in 151-9.

Hollie Armitage top-scored with a career best 59, before Sophie Luff threw in from the leg-side boundary to affect a quartet of run outs.

Armitage’s innings was then dwarfed in comparison by Indian left-hander Mandhana and New Zealand’s Priest, who shared 133 inside 14 overs.

Mandhana hit 70 off 47 balls and wicketkeeper Priest, who also had a hand in all five run outs, 72 not out off 43.

It means that, at the halfway stage in their campaign, the Storm already have one hand on a place at finals day at Hove on September 1, having secured a bonus point victory with 5.1 overs remaining.

Freya Davies, Claire Nicholas, Sonia Odera and Anya Shrubsole had all picked up a wicket apiece in the Yorkshire innings, with Shrubsole's 1-16 off four the standout.

Last year, Mandhana was the KSL’s leading run-scorer with 421 from nine innings, including two fifties and a hundred.

And here, she displayed similar dominance on the way to a 29-ball fifty, achieved in the eighth over when the Storm were 86 without loss.

Seventy four runs came off the power play, while opening partner Priest scored only eight of the first 58.

Priest played her part as the partnership approached 100, hitting seamer Alice Davidson-Richards for three successive boundaries to end the sixth.

Happy to camp on the back foot and hit powerfully to leg, she reached her fifty off 33 balls in the 10th over with the score at 102 without loss.

She finished the game with two sixes in three balls off Linsey Smith’s left-arm spin, after Alice Davidson-Richards had had Mandhana caught at long-on with the finish in sight.

The Storm are back in action on Sunday (2.30pm), against Lancashire at Chester Boughton Hall.