PORT ELIZABETH (South Africa) - Not even the St George's Park band could save Eastern Province's acute embarrassment last night as they folded faster than a flimsy deckchair in a howling gale.

Winning the toss was to have been an advantage for Dave Callaghan's Jumbos, but at 26 for four there was no way back in this third match of the Standard Bank quarter-final series against Border who went on to reach the semi-final with a four wicket victory.

Although the ``Stand by Me'' refrain was predominant through out the afternoon and well into the night, it failed to rearrange the deckchairs as the good ship St George's founded on the rocks of the team's batting frailties. Flawed and lacking in basic skills and ignoring all the limited-overs Eastern Province were actually fortunate to reach 98. Even accounting for the dodgy pitch which was used.

Only a touch of rearguard responsibility from Eldine Baptiste hauled Eastern Province to a total resembling something a little better than a beached row boat of lost causes. And if the announcers kept telling their audiences that Meyrick Pringle, aged 32, is the twilight of his career, Baptiste at 38 must be positively geriatric.

So there were had the ``geriatric'' Baptiste and ``middle-aged'' Shafiek Abrahams doing their bit for a lost cause until Abrahams undid all the good work by becoming the third in a hat-trick of run outs engineered by Border captain, Pieter Strydom. They had nursed the innings along nicely from the mid-40s until the late 80s when Abrahams fell the same way as had Mark Rushmere and Justin Kemp before him.

In an interesting, if unfathomable departure, Callaghan batted ``twilight'' Pringle at five in the order. Four balls and no runs later and after the Jumbos captain had cut a Tyron Henderson delivery into his stumps, Pringle was Henderson's second victim. It was the sort of shot you would expect on a school playground at mid-morning break just after the bell rings.

And, if age is a defining moment in a player's career, Callaghan at 34 has surely reached the ``pensionable'' stage.

Vasbert Drakes, winner of the SuperSports Series award, began Eastern Province's woe when a perfect in-swinging yorker ripped out Carl Bradfield's middle stump with seven runs on the board and Makhaya Ntini and Tyron Henderson, with the skipper's fielding did the rest.

Just how the variable bounce and the slowness of the pitch behaved was also evident when Border, in chasing the meager total, lost six wickets in the process.

We had ``twilight'' Pringle picking up three wickets, bowling Drakes with a last ball delivery as Eastern Province attempted to salvage something from the game other than the memory of a lifeboat load of failure.

``Pensionable'' Callaghan had to bowl Pringle through if he hoped to get a faint whiff of victory in the Jumbos nostrils. It failed, but not through the want of trying. Even ``geriatric'' Baptiste picked up three wickets with steady seam and swing bowling.

He might have felt aggrieved when an lbw appeal was turned down; a wicket at that stage of the Border innings could have sent tremours of alarm through the ranks. But with Piet Botha batting with steady, calming and solid assurance, Border were not in danger of losing. Not unless they batted as badly has had the Eastern Province top-order.

Frankly Botha deserved the man of the match award ahead of the recipients Ntini and Henderson, with the award staying in the Border camp, no one was complaining later on.

Border now have a home semi-final; against either Free State or Northerns on March 26 and clearly fancy their chances of playing in a second final this season.