A six-wicket haul by Matt Donaldson and Alex Bovill's maiden ECB Southern Premier League 50 carried Basingstoke & North Hants to an important win at May's Bounty.
Donaldson took 6-29 as Havant crumbled from 80-3 to 128 all out and an eventual four-wicket defeat which left them dangling a solitary point off Alton in bottom place, writes Mike Vimpany.
"That's back-to-back wins and our third in six outings, so we're headed in the right direction,"said skipper Joe Oates. "But we've still got a lot to do as a batting unit."
The scheduled Time pennant match between Basingstoke and Havant lasted only six overs before heavy rain caused a cancellation, so under Premier League regulations it was switched to a limited overs affair.
Havant opener Chris Morgan probably wished the umpires had called it off there and then so he could go home!
He originally bagged a duck with Havant 7-1 when rain halted the original game. Remarkably, he then got a second zero - superbly caught behind one handed by Richard Vinn in the limited-overs game. Havant 9-2, two wickets for Donaldson.
Chris Stone, with all bar two of his 36 runs coming in boundaries (two sixes and six fours), and Rob Woolley, with a lively 32, lifted Havant to 80-3 before both fell to Ash Neal, who returned a tidy 3-17 off his ten overs.
The Havant dressing room door swung back and forth after that with Donaldson taking four more wickets to finish with an SPL best 6-29.
Basingstoke quickly lost Matt Deadman to a bizarre stumping, but Neal, with 35, and Bovill averted any further losses and took the town side to 74 before a second wicket went down.
Neal's departure triggered a mini collapse with four wickets falling for 20 runs, three of them to left-arm spinner Chris Morgan 3-41).
Teenager Bovill, who spent the past winter playing for Claremont in the Cape Town's Western Province CA League, got in some useful middle practice at Lymington last week and got his head down again.
Playing correctly and each ball on his merits for Cranleigh School product found a useful partner in Neil Shelar (13), with whom Bovill added 30 as Stoke progressed to the brink of victory at 124-6.
Bovill (55 not out) brought up his maiden Basingstoke with a match winning pull for six over mid-wicket.
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