SOUTH Wilts are one game away from another trip to the Ageas Bowl in the Southern League T20 Cup.

Standing in their way are Premier Division title rivals St Cross.

They travel there on Sunday for a semi-final clash which starts at 3pm.

Meanwhile in the league campaign with four games left to go, South Wilts suddenly find themselves playing catch-up in the three-horse race for the coveted Premier Division championship.

An unanticipated three-wicket defeat by lowly Lymington put a serious dent in the club’s title ambitions.

Ahead of Saturday’s visit to already relegated New Milton, South Wilts are in third place, effectively five points behind new leaders St Cross Symondians and four adrift of Burridge, who are now second.

South Wilts twice allowed promising situations to slip from their grasp.

Given a 73-run launch by Tom Morton (49) and Tom Cowley (30) and pushed on by Will Wade’s steady 46, South Wilts appeared to be headed towards a winning score at 145-3.

But, as Queenslander James Grady (5-32) began to create inroads, so South Wilts folded.

The last seven wickets fell for 65 runs, Dom Hand and Josh Proctor taking two each.

But even a modest 210 looked as though it might win the match with the Lymington top order back in the pavilion and only 40 runs on the board.

Scotsman Henry Edwards hit Lymington out of trouble at 40-5 and laid the path for an eventual three-wicket win.

The former Oxford MCCU batsman, who previously played for top East Anglian Premier League club Frinton-on-Sea, cracked eight fours and five sixes in a blistering 76 which kick-started a remarkable Lymington revival, which Matt Metcalfe and Conor Moors completed.

South Wilts, who began the second ‘white ball’ phase nine points ahead at the top, saw their below-par 210 overhauled with 22 balls to spare.

Edwards, who played for Scotland in the 2012 ICC Under-19 World Cup in Brisbane and now teaches PE at Ryde School on the Isle of Wight, soon changed the course of the match.

In a 52-ball stay at the crease, he cleared the Bemerton boundary rope five times and, with eight other fours, smashed 76 in quick time.

By the time he perished as Morton’s third victim behind the stumps, Lymington had progressed to 132-7.

Lymington, second from bottom of the table at the start of play, still had work to do – another 79 runs, in fact – but Metcalfe (30 not out) and Conor Moors, with a key 37 not out, seized the moment.

The eighth-wicket pair polished off the target with relative ease.

South Wilts hope to have all-rounder Arthur Godsal (groin) back from injury for Saturday’s New Milton visit.

James Hayward is still side-lined, but has had the plaster cast removed from his broken hand and may play before the end of the season.

The seconds are back in the Division Three promotion frame thanks to a Tom Berzins inspired 10-run win over Gosport Borough at Privett Park.

Berzins carried his bat for a league best 91 not out, sharing important middle-order stands with Ben Fisher (40) and Rob Pittman (40) after teenage all-rounder Jacob Harris (6-36) had plunged SW into trouble at 29-4.

South Wilts’ eventual 202-7 was just about enough as Gosport fell ten runs short.

Harris (50) struck his Southern League 50 before handing the batten to Kiwi teenager Liam Campbell (69), who kept Borough in the hunt until Pittman’s spell of 3-53 proved decisive. Gosport were 192 all out.

Pittman’s side now faces a Saturday lunchtime crunch-time with SPL3 champions designate Fair Oak visiting Bemerton for a match South Wilts must win.

Despite their surprise loss to Lymington II, Bashley lie only one point behind and Purbrook are creeping up on the rails.

South Wilts thirds rekindled their wobbling Hampshire League County Division Two promotion hopes with a Tim Cowley inspired two-wicket win over Old Basing at Bemerton.

They chased down Old Basing’s 185-8 with two overs to spare.

But at 134-8 (Matt Anderson-Emm 38), it looked anything like a South Wilts win.

That’s when Cowley (28) and Tom Lewis (20) came together with an unbroken 55-run stand which got South Wilts across the line.

Earlier, Cowley’s tidy 3-9 spell complimented useful two-wicket spells by Henry Smith and Tom Lewis.

The win leaves South Wilts IIIs third in the log behind Bedhampton (who lost at Odiham & Greywell) and Sway, but facing a tough test at Ferndown Wayfarers on Saturday.