Somerset Bridge 139 all out

PHC 143-1

The only good thing that can be said for this completely one-sided affair is that it may have allowed Fiqre Crockwell to play himself back into some kind of form.

Short on confidence and runs for much of the season, Crockwell hit an unbeaten 95 as Western Counties champions PHC thrashed Somerset Bridge in the final round of this season's competition on Saturday.

And with a tri-series against Canada and the West Indies just a couple of weeks away, that will be more than welcome news to Bermuda head coach David Moore.

While Crockwell will undoubtedly face much more threatening attacks in Canada, if selected, the Bermuda opener looked in better form than he has for some weeks, and his footwork and timing were not as poor as they have been recently.

Such was Crockwell's dominance of the Bridge bowlers that fellow opener Jason Anderson (25) had to play second fiddle as the pair put on 111 for the first, and only, wicket to fall.

Anderson was the man out, chopping a Bilal Lambert delivery on to his stumps.

Still, the PHC wicketkeeper won't be too unhappy with his weekend's work, especially as he has been called into the Bermuda squad for the trip to Canada in September.

Other than that this game was exactly as might have been expected, and the only reason that PHC had to chase as many runs as they did was entirely down to the disinterested approach that the team took to their time in the field.

To Somerset Bridge's credit they didn't name a single guest player in their line-up, not that they didn't want to. Both Jordan DeSilva and Joshua Gilbert arrived at Southampton Oval hoping to play, only to be prevented from doing so because Bridge had failed to give the Western Counties Association the required two weeks notice of their intention to pick them.

And while the inclusion of DeSilva and Gilbert would have been unlikely to swing the match Bridge's way, it might have made it more of a contest.

As it was, Bridge were quickly reduced to 39 for three as Dean Stephens picked up the wickets of Kacey Smith (7) and Donovan Burgess (10), and PHC even dropped two catches early on when Mark Smith and Ricardo Brangman were caught on their heels in the field and didn't make their ground in time.

When Sean Riley was run out for a duck, Bridge were 40 for four, and the game looked like it might be over before lunch time. However, Derek Hill (37) and skipper Kirk Simons (22) ground out 37 valuable runs over the course of nine overs.

Bridge made PHC work for their last five wickets, scraping for every run, as they crawled towards three figures, and then towards 150.

Opening bowler Kevin Tucker came back to make sure they didn't get there, picking up the wickets of three tailenders as the innings finally came to a close with Bridge all out for 139 off 41.5 agonisingly bad overs.

In reply, Crockwell and Anderson raced away and scored 100 in little more than 13 overs.

Anderson's wicket was nothing more than a slight annoyance, more to the batsman himself than anything, and Crockwell then wrapped up the win, hitting the only three deliveries that Riley bowled for 14 runs.