HAMPSHIRE’S Calmore Sport Club are one win from a Lord’s final after victory in the National Village Cup, with club captain Mark Lavelle saying: “The evening went late, definitely. It was a great day.”

Calmore were celebrating after hitting 205-4 from the allotted 40 overs before bowling out Gloucestershire side Rockhampton, the 2013 competition finalists, for 167 in 37 overs.

The success sets up a home tie against Stoke Green, with a showpiece final in London at the Home of Cricket, Lord’s, for the winner.

This run is Calmore’s debut season in the competition and Lavelle, who is a school games organiser at Solent University, insists the target was always to reach Lord’s – but that doesn’t make it any easier to believe for the village side.

He told the Daily Echo: “We entered the competition with the end goal always to get to Lord’s, we’ve said all along ‘six games to go, five games to go’ but I don’t think we ever really thought we’d be in this position where we are one game away.

“Now we can really think about it and get excited. The semi is a bit of a final itself as you’re playing for the chance to play at Lord’s, but if we get there we obviously want to win it.

“It was a difficult one because we like to bat second in that competition, particularly at home against teams that haven’t played Calmore because they don’t know what a good score is.

“It seems to be like a cauldron, there’s no shade and not even a breeze. I felt for their guys having to do a three hour journey and come and field straight away, it couldn’t have been good for the legs. It felt like it got hotter as the day went on so we did well to manage the conditions.”

Opening batsman Ben Johns (75) and Will Brewster (53) set Calmore off to a perfect start with a century partnership, before the blistering heat allowed the game to catch up with them.

The rest of the order contributed a dozen a piece, apart from captain Lavelle who only faced two balls as the 40 overs expired.

Young bowler Liam Carty, 20, stepped up to play his first game in the competition for Calmore after the isolation of Ben Perry left them a man short – and he delivered a superb spell with the ball in hand.

Carty bowled eight overs, taking three wickets at an economy of 3.38, while Lavelle himself claimed two wickets and James Manning’s eight overs conceded just 21 runs and delivered a wicket.

Lavelle continued: “Ben and Will set a great platform up front but the heat got to them, Ben got ran out and his legs couldn’t move anymore bless him.

“We got 90 off the last 10 to take the game away from them but they got off to an absolute flyer and we thought we might be a bit short, but managed to drag it back.

“We got their captain out in the first over which we thought was a really good wicket but their two and three put on a really good partnership.

“We took wickets in clusters and sent them into panic mode. They chewed up overs and the run rate went up so they had to go after it and allowed us to take wickets at the end."

More than worthy of a complimentary note, Lavelle added: “Liam came in and did a brilliant job for such a young lad.”