CAPTAIN Peter Deakin admitted he was happy to play an anchor role to shepherd Dorset home after Staffordshire had retaliated by reducing them to 14 for two.

Deakin said: "The only way Staffordshire could go after their innings was to try and get a few early wickets and pressurise us, which they did.

"They are an aggressive and determined side, particularly when they bowl and it was just a case of batting with patience and application after our first two wickets went down.

"We knew we had to do a job and see off their opening bowlers, so I was happy to play the anchor role with, first Tom Webley, and then Darren Cowley.

"Being captain, I knew that if I batted through we would get there and we did with Darren playing a nice cameo role of 26 with me as an anchor.

"Our bowlers set up our win though. They were all superb with Matt Metcalfe particularly magnificent."

Staffordshire captain Richard Harvey, whose side only arrived in Bournemouth at 2am yesterday, said: "We are very disappointed.

"There are no complaints from us because our performance was just not good enough.

"We were totally outplayed and that has not happened to us for a while.

"It was not the best track I have played on but it wasn't the reason for too many of our wickets.

"The guy (Metcalfe) just bowled medium pace with away swing and it was hard batting. Good luck to him. He put it in the right place and we didn't respond.

"We got ourselves into a situation where we lost too many wickets. We were always consolidating, just trying to dig in.

Their captain (Deakin) batted very well. He didn't chase anything and knew the runs would come."