Sarisbury remain top of Southern Premier League second tier despite losing at Portsmouth

With four weeks of the season remaining, they enjoy a 14-point lead over Alton - only the champions win promotion to the Premier Division.

Asked to chase 238 for victory, Sarisbury reached 105-3 before losing the key wicket of leading runscorer Sam Floyd (38).

That brought Nathan Feltham to the crease, whose middle order runs have been a feature of Sarisbury’s promotion challenge.

He struck 61 off 62 balls - with seven fours and three sixes - before Reuban McArdle (3-53) had him caught by James Christian to make the score 187-8. They were eventually all out for 207, to lose by 30 runs.

It had been a consistent batting effort by Portsmouth, who reached 237-9 without any batter contributing a half-century.

Joe Kooner-Evans (38) and Sujeeth Daini (37) top scored while Ronan DeGrussa bagged 4-33 to jump into top spot in the division’s leading wicket-takers list.

The Australian now has 34 wickets, one more than Alton’s Bash Walters.