FORGET the Royal London One-Day Cup quarter-final and the T20 Blast semi-final. The biggest match of Hampshire’s season is the LV County Championship clash against Somerset that starts at Taunton tomorrow.

For all the relative glamour of the limited-overs cups, it is the top flight of the unfairly maligned first-class competition that separates the best from the rest.

Which is why Hampshire’s game against a Somerset side only five points above them is, to reword a football cliche, a veritable 48-pointer.

Win it and Hampshire will be out of the relegation zone for the first time since April and in control of their own destiny.

Lose it and they will have it all to do going into two difficult games, at home to champions-elect Yorkshire and away to Nottinghamshire.

There are parallels with Great Escape run-in of 2008, when Hampshire beat Yorkshire and drew with Somerset in successive matches before winning their last game at Trent Bridge by 203 runs.

If Hampshire secure a third successive win, they will have gone a long way to ensuring history repeats itself seven years on.

Once again, a leg-spinner has been the catalyst.

Imran Tahir took 44 wickets at 16.68 in 2008 and the impact of Crane’s ten scalps so far, at 22.5, cannot be underestimated.

His emergence, and the form of Fidel Edwards (16 wickets at 11.7 since returning from the Caribbean Premier League) have given Hampshire the belief they can take 20 wickets against anyone.

Crane was left out of the team that won at Durham, where Hampshire’s horses-for-courses selection policy reaped dividends.

But this week’s Indian summer (apart from the showers forecast for Saturday) is likely to see him recalled.

Edwards, meanwhile, will undergo a fitness test after a hamstring injury denied him the final Durham wicket last Thursday.

“We’re confident Fidel will be ok,” said Hampshire director of cricket Giles White.

Should that be the case, Ryan Stevenson will probably miss out playing at the ground he often visited as a young Devonian, despite his impressive debut at Chester-le Street.

Somerset drew their last Championship match at Taunton against bottom-of-the-table Worcestershire.

But they are without a win in five since beating Hampshire by nine wickets at The Ageas Bowl in June – and Hampshire have not lost a Championship match at Taunton since 1996.

Somerset are without Alfonso Thomas and have replaced former Hampshire wicketkeeper Michael Bates with New Zealand’s former Bashley gloveman Luke Ronchi for the run-in.

But Jamie Overton is available after missing Somerset’s innings defeat at Yorkshire, when he was injured in the warm-up. Play starts at 10.30am.

Hampshire (from): Carberry, Adams, Vince, Smith, Dawson, Ervine, Wheater, Berg, McLaren, Stevenson, Crane, Tomlinson, Edwards.

Somerset (from): Trescothick, Abell, Cooper, Hildreth, Allenby, Trego, Ronchi (wkt), Gregory, C Overton, Groenewald, Leach, J Overton, Barrow.