Southampton Oval (PHC won toss): Southampton Rangers beat PHC by 145 runs

Southampton Rangers moved one step closer to successfully defending the Western Counties Cup after an ultimately crushing win in the third round on Saturday, but plucky PHC made sure that their path was littered with potholes.

The margin of victory suggests that there was only ever one team in it, but that tells only half the story.

PHC dictated terms for long periods in the first half of the match after inserting the cup-holders at Southampton Oval, but in the end paid for losing too many of the small battles that needed to go their way if there was to be an upset of epic proportion.

The playing surface was said to be unaffected by the morning rain but batting seemed hazardous, especially when the ball was hard. Southampton were in trouble early and often, and their collapse might have been terminal had Marcus Simmons held Janeiro Tucker at long-off when he was on 11 and the total 79 for four. That the home side lost two wickets in short order to slip to 93 for six told of the stranglehold that they were put under by a PHC side, for whom young Charles Trott was outstanding with the ball.

But Tucker, in his first innings since getting a first-ball duck at Cup Match, was still there on his way to a top score of 46, thus applying the glue to what had been a non-adhesive innings. By the time he was bowled by Stephen Bremar attempting to register his fifty in agricultural fashion, much of the sting had gone out of the PHC attack, to the extent that tailenders Rohaan Simons and Kevin Tucker were able to carry their bats with little alarm in an unbroken ninth-wicket partnership worth 58. The addition of 24 penalty runs at the end of the innings for PHC being four overs behind the clock effectively burst the dam of the challengers’ resistance.

Their highest score this season had been 240 against Somerset Bridge in a First Division match, but even that was in a losing cause; and, despite the presence of Fiqre Crockwell in their line-up as a guest player who was fresh from a mature Cup Match fifty, making 250 on a two-paced pitch was always going to be beyond them.

The size of task was made evident as early as the first over when poor Ellsworth Bean was undone by a Kevin Tucker ball that pitched on a length but barely got above ankle height to leave him palpably leg-before for a duck.

New batsman Bremar, a guest player from Devonshire Rec, greeted Tucker’s next ball with a crashing drive through the covers for four to give PHC’s small band of merry followers something to sing about.

The partnership between Bremar and Sheridan Ming had grown to 25 when the latter was adjudged to have gloved an effort ball from Tucker that zipped through at chest height.

Bremar, who seemed determined to hit his way into the record books, followed his opening four with one more and a big six over long-on off Derrick Brangman. But his penchant for the big shot proved his undoing when he had reached 18 and took on Tucker, his attempted hook landing tamely in the hands of Chris Pitcher at square leg to usher the arrival of Crockwell.

PHC were almost instantly 29 for four once the ill-equipped Davin Dill went for a duck to a Tucker ball so slow and so short that it should have been given wings and a new area code. Instead, the No 4 bat timidly popped the ball up to point and Kevin Tucker, with the first four wickets from his left-arm medium pace, had already put himself squarely in line for man of the match.

It was here that Rangers knew that the game was on the line, with Crockwell, the St David’s player, and PHC captain Khiry Furbert in partnership.

The pair had only the odd leg-before appeal to concern themselves with until, when the stand had reached 34, the highest of the innings, Crockwell succumbed to a rush of blood the ball after depositing Janeiro Tucker over the clubhouse for six. A fuller and slightly quicker riposte by Tucker made his Bermuda team-mate look a mug. So blatantly leg-before was Crockwell, who made 22, that he was virtually halfway into his “bat tucked under arm” routine by the time umpire Craig Brangman’s finger went up.

The PHC challenge virtually over, it was only a matter now of how much — and it was to Furbert’s credit that they comfortably surpassed the pitiful challenges that Willow Cuts and Warwick had put up in the previous rounds. Furbert hit three fours and two sixes in his 68-ball 34 before he top-edged an attempted slog sweep off Stovell and was caught at short fine leg.

Kevin Tucker finished with four for 28 from eight overs, while Janeiro Tucker took two for 23 from eight and Stovell two for 13 from five overs of off spin. Fourteen-year-old Dalin Richardson, making his county debut, finished the match with a double wicket maiden.

Earlier, Stovell was the pick of the early Rangers batsmen with 37, coming off 66 balls with five fours. Janeiro Tucker had three fours and a six in his innings, while Shannon Rayner hit a quick 28, but it was not until Simons’s 33 not out and an unbeaten 27 from Kevin Tucker that they could feel relatively safe.

Trott claimed three for 27 from ten overs to lead the PHC bowlers, while Danté Wellman had two for 37. Kyle Lightbourne, the former Somerset Cup Match and Bermuda fast bowler who still found time to forge a professional football career, could count himself unlucky in his one for 40 from nine overs of slow left arm, as two catches were put down off his bowling, including the defining chance off the bat of Janeiro Tucker.