Wendell Smith, the St David’s coach, apologised to the club’s fans for his team’s woeful fielding display, despite ending their 12-year Belco Cup drought after defeating Willow Cuts at Lord’s yesterday.

Set 191 runs by Cuts, who were playing in their first Belco Cup final, St David’s chased down their target in style with lower-order batsman Rudell Pitcher smashing two successive sixes to complete the victory with 28 balls remaining.

Smith, however, still reprimanded his players for letting Cuts off the hook by dropping a staggering seven catches during their sloppy period of out-cricket.

“From a coaching perspective, the result is pleasing because we haven’t won the Belco Cup for a long time,” Smith said.

“But our performance in the field was very disappointing and I want to apologise to the St David’s community on behalf of our players because fielding is something that we usually take pride in. This week we will be doing a lot of catching practice.”

St David’s made a blistering start, reducing Willow Cuts to 73 for four, including the prize wickets of Chris Foggo, Chris Douglas and Malachi Jones, who had been on a run of three successive half-centuries or better.

But they allowed their opponents to recover to 149 for six, with Deunte Darrell and Sheroy Fubler both given a reprieve before going on to score fifties.

Smith has warned his players that they must show more killer instinct if they are to continue to dominate the domestic game this season.

“We started well and were on top of them after getting Douglas early and Shaquille Jones with a brilliant run-out,” said Smith, whose side won the Logic Premier Division, Knockout Cup and Eastern Counties last season

“But just when we could have put them to bed, [Angelo] Cannonier dropped the left-hander [Fubler] with a dolly at mid-off and then we dropped him again down at third man.

“We gave them so many extra runs and we need to finish teams off better than that. We should have only been chasing about 130.

“We fielded poorly but fortunately we had enough depth in our batting to get us across the line.”

George O’Brien was the pick of the St David’s bowlers, claiming four wickets, while Justin Pitcher took two wickets before limping off the pitch with a groin strain midway through the Cuts innings.

Although Cuts, who had forfeited the toss after arriving to Lord’s late, did not necessarily make St David’s pay for their “butterfingers”, their total of 191 from 50 overs did at least give them a fighting chance of victory.

McLaren Lowe, the St David’s opener, pulled Kevon Fubler, the slow left-arm bowler, for six with the very first ball of his team’s innings, although they were pegged back to 84 for four, with Lowe, Angelo Cannonier and Sammy Robinson all falling cheaply.

OJ Pitcher, the St David’s captain, had reason to feel hard done by after being given out caught behind off the bowling of Shaquille Jones, just about keeping his temper in check to avoid any disciplinary action.

“I felt I was unlucky to be given out, but I must apologise for my actions because I did react,” said Pitcher, who made a chopping gesture at his stumps after his dismissal.

“But sometimes in sport that happens and you get caught up in the moment and you react. That didn’t show me in a positive light but sometimes it happens in sport.”

Fiqre Crockwell, who scored 51, and a O’Brien, who bludgeoned his way to 44, set about repairing the St David’s innings with Cuts never realistically looking like pulling off an upset in the season’s maiden competition.

Kamal Bashir did the most damage with the ball for Cuts, claiming three wickets.

Malachi Jones, the Cuts captain, said that he was proud of his team’s display but admitted that defending 191 was always going to be a tall order against St David’s.

“For our first showing in the Belco Cup final, I felt we gave a good account of ourselves,” Jones said, “but I felt we cut ourselves short in the batting department by about 30 to 40 runs.

“Defending [191], it was always going to be a tough task because St David’s have got a really deep batting line-up.

“I also think we shot ourselves in the foot when batting in the middle overs. There were too many dot balls when we weren’t looking to score.

“It wasn’t a case of not looking for the boundary balls, but keeping the scoreboard ticking over — that would have been our 30 runs right there.”

In Saturday’s semi-finals, St David’s made short work of Cleveland in a nine-wicket victory after being set 128. OJ Pitcher scored an imperious 77 not out from only 57 balls.

At At Somerset Cricket Club, meanwhile, Cuts chased down a mammoth 296 to beat Southampton Rangers by three wickets with more than four overs to spare.

Deunte Darrell made 92 and Malachi Jones 81 to more than offset Janeiro Tucker’s 86 and an unbeaten 60 by Kwame Tucker. But it was Sheroy Fubler’s 52 at No?7 that got Cuts over the line.

How they would have wished for a bit of that at Lord’s 24 hours later.