ROD BRANSGROVE and Rupert Lowe are the high profile chairmen of Southampton's top two sporting teams. Yet while Lowe battles to restore his popularity in the eyes of many Saints fans following Paul Sturrock's departure, Bransgrove's star is rising - he has overseen Hampshire's championship promotion and is preparing to see the ground he personally helped fund to the tune of over £4m beamed into millions of homes worldwide...

THEY are two men with highly successful business careers behind them who have spent the last few years attempting to transform the fortunes of Southampton's premier sports teams.

And there are many similarities between Saints chairman Rupert Lowe and his Hampshire cricket counterpart Rod Bransgrove.

The duo are both relative newcomers to their sports in terms of holding power.

Despite that, both have clambered into a position of importance in their national governing body.

Both have overseen a time of great change to their clubs, including moves to 21st century stadiums.

Both have seen major international sport come to their stadiums.

And both remain ambitious to see their clubs make 'the next step up'.

But today Rod Bransgrove is probably enjoying life a bit more than his St Mary's colleague.

The Daily Echo have received numerous letters from Saints fans criticising Lowe for the way Paul Sturrock became the latest manager through the 'exit' door during his time as chairman.

At present Lowe needs to build his popularity up with the fans; Bransgrove is hoping his worst time is now well and truly behind him.

This time last year Bransgrove should have been sweating - Hampshire had finished second from bottom of the county championship's second division, and had they lost their last game at Derbyshire it would have been them and not the East Midlanders who would have held the wooden spoon.

Hampshire's decision to employ experienced thirtysomethings Wasim Akram and Ed Giddins backflopped dismally when both failed to complete the season due to injuries.

And Bransgrove's decision to axe coach Jimmy Cook before the end of the 2002 season and replace him with ex-Northlands Road batsman Paul Terry didn't seem to be working.

Despite promotion in the one-day league, if Bransgrove had been a football chairman he might well have dispensed with Terry's services.

But the man who was a hugely successful businessman - for example, he was involved in the company that held television rights for well-known children's characters such as Basil Brush and Budgie the Helicopter - stood firm in the wake of criticism from members.

Shane Warne's suspension from world cricket for 2003 threw a massive dent in Bransgrove's thinking for last summer. The masterplan was to team up one of cricket's most famous ever players with Terry, who was 'Australianised' after spending numerous English winters running a Perth-based academy.

Following Warne's 12-month ban for taking a banned substance prior to the World Cup, Hampshire were forced at short notice to look for a new overseas player and a new skipper. Wasim was brought in as the former and John Crawley promoted to fill the latter role, a position he was happy to relinquish to Warne in 2004.

Bransgrove had faith in the Warne/Terry axis and, though 12 months late, he has been proved right. Last weekend's win at Leicestershire was Hampshire's eighth four-day league victory in 15 attempts - compared to just four in the previous two years - and sealed their promotion to the first division of the county championship.

And that means next summer they will be playing in the top flight of both the one-day and four-day league for the first time since the county structure was split in 1999.

Bransgrove told the Echo this week that if anything Hampshire - whom he helped turn into English cricket's first PLC county in 2002 - were currently ahead of where he once thought they might be.

Off the field as well as on it, Bransgrove has good reason to be happy with his lot - Lowe cannot say the same. Though the latter painted a healthy financial picture in Saints' accounts last Friday, on the field the St Mary's faithful are concerned.

This Saturday a Rose Bowl attendance record 10,000 crowd will pack into the West End stadium for India's ICC Trophy tie against Kenya.

It is the first of five ICC matches the Rose Bowl has been asked to stage in what is international cricket's second most important limited-overs tournament behind the World Cup.

The highlight is the English national cricket team's first-ever visit to Southampton to play Sri Lanka on Friday week in front of a capacity 15,000 attendance.

In only its fourth season, the Rose Bowl, the stadium that would not have happened but for Bransgrove's own money, will be beamed into millions of homes worldwide as an international cricket venue of note.

Indeed, Bransgrove's vision is to turn the stadium into English cricket's premier one-day international venue. Ideally, Test matches will one day be played in Southampton, but you can see the limited overs game as providing the Rose Bowl's primary role in terms of international cricket.

Bransgrove, Hampshire and local cricket fans have embraced the Twenty20 Cup with gusto in the last two years.

It's quite possible they were all made for each other.

The marketing manager's dream of the wham-bam format is hardly traditionalist, with both eyes firmly fixed on providing maximum family entertainment.

Rose Bowl managing director Nick Pike said last week the Twenty20 Cup had helped rid English cricket of "the stuffiness" that was still associated with the sport. The competition could be the financial saviour of some counties.

Bransgrove would surely nod in agreement. Like the Twenty20, he has also helped to bring Hampshire kicking and screaming into the modern world.

As well as providing the state-of-the-art Rose Bowl - only the second brand new cricket ground in England in over half-a-century behind Durham's Riverside - he also scrapped the members-run county cricket club committee format that had survived generations.

It was a case of farewell Hampshire County Cricket Club, hello Hampshire Cricket - another statement of Bransgrove's intent to revolutionise the previously conservative world of county cricket.

In addition, he has also opened the business up to new investment potential - apart from the internationals, there is a golf club at the 150 acre Rose Bowl site, high profile music concerts have been staged and the stadium vies with St Mary's to host top corporate events.

The money that list brings in is invaluable; in order to flourish, county clubs need to produce as many revenue streams as possible.

Football is no different - hence Lowe's desire to promote St Mary's as a major conference and banqueting venue, and Saints' willingness to explore the option of staging concerts. They cannot let the Rose Bowl have too big a slice of any commercial pies going, and vice versa. The two teams might share fans, but the battle between them off the pitch is healthy business competition.

Bransgrove, like Lowe, is certainly bringing in more money than ever before - the Rose Bowl hosts the first England v Australia Twenty20 international next summer in what will be another 15,000 sell-out and the catering and corporate side of the business should record another healthy profit.

You can understand his desire to promote international cricket - unlike Lowe, he can't rely on decent crowds; Hampshire games, the Twenty20 apart, struggle to attract 5,000 while the internationals are known money-spinners.

The next task for Bransgrove is to make sure those funds are channelled to further improving Hampshire's team to ensure their promotion to the championship's top tier is not as short-lived as last time (instant relegation followed promotion in 2002).

Fans complain they don't see Saints in the market for so-called 'big' names; at Hampshire they have one of the biggest of all-time. And Warne's return in 2005 is a must. Continuity is so important and the skipper's involvement, if only until the Ashes series starts in late June, is imperative. He is not only a match-winner but his influence rubs off on others, he can eke out an extra 10 per cent from others just by being Shane Warne. That is why Hampshire have won twice as many championship games in 2004 than in 2002 and 2003 put together.

It's a typical Aussie attitude Warne brings with him, and one Bransgrove is comfortable with. It is no surprise the chairman embraces the Aussies' style - you wouldn't say he was necessarily brash but he is assured, confident and desperate to succeed.

Hampshire have employed five Aussies as overseas players this year and all had something to prove. Shane Watson, Michael Clarke, Simon Katich and Michael Dighton are hungry to improve; Warne was hungry to show he could be a successful captain.

That is the way forward for Hampshire - to employ those ultra-determined to improve. And there are few hungrier for success in world sport than Aussie cricketers.

Rod Bransgrove's legacy for the county will always be the Rose Bowl, like Lowe's will probably be St Mary's.

He would dearly love to be known as the man who helped deliver Hampshire's first trophy since the 1992 Benson & Hedges Cup as well. Yet that will take time.

For the moment, as local cricket fans prepare to enjoy the likes of Flintoff, Lara, Ponting and Dravid in Southampton, Bransgrove is the man who has helped deliver the world's top names to the Rose Bowl.

And the fact they will be playing for their countries, as opposed to Hampshire, doesn't make that feat any less impressive.