Lancashire toil on flat batting track against Hampshire

Lancashire managed to claim only one wicket on the opening day of their Specsavers County Championship match against Hampshire at the Ageas Bowl.

Will Smith led the way with 99 not out to guide the hosts to 276/1 on a turgid opening day in Southampton, as the hosts capitalised on winning the toss to inflict a painful day in the field upon Lancashire.

On a flat wicket with little assistance for the bowlers, captain Smith and Jimmy Adams (88) assembled a gigantic opening partnership worth 191 runs, before an unbroken stand between Smith and Tom Alsop (50*) ensured a dominant first day for the south-coast outfit.

It proved to be a vital toss to win, although with Hampshire languishing at the bottom of the table, the production of such a lifeless wicket is not likely to offer them the opportunity to record their second win of the season. Lancashire did not claim a single wicket in either of the first two sessions and it took 68.1 overs for the first wicket to fall and the unbeaten partnership between Smith and Alsop added a further 85 runs before the close to compound Lancashire's misery.

Smith finished the first day one run shy of his first hundred of the season, having been dropped by his namesake Tom Smith at second clip when he was on 70 in the evening session. The Hampshire skipper had earlier progressed to a 147-ball fifty, surviving the first two sessions of the match unscathed alongside Adams.

First-class debutant Saqib Mahmood suffered a luckless opening spell, with a particularly vociferous appeal for a caught behind on Adams being turned down by the umpire. In addition to the lack of swing, whenever the ball did take the edge of the bat it would invariably fall short of the slip cordon, as it did when Adams edged a delivery from Mahmood just short of Steven Croft.

A lunchtime score of 69/0 represented a circumspect start from Hampshire, but the home side were able to kick on after surviving a handful of near-misses in the first hour of the day. Adams was first to reach his half-century in 122 balls with eight boundaries, with Smith following shortly afterwards in the afternoon session to put Lancashire through the same unfortunate fate of failing to make a breakthrough in the next session of the day.

When Hampshire returned for the final session at 181/0, only three balls were possible before rain forced the players to leave the field very briefly. Three balls into the resumption, Smith failed to hold on to a routine chance in the slips off Jordan Clark, who was arguably Lancashire's best bowler on the first day, not just because he was the only person to take a wicket, but because his extra pace and bounce offered the Red Rose something different.

Clark didn't have to wait long after the dropped catch to forge the first and only breakthrough of the day, with Adams slapping a drive to Croft at point to fall for 88. The second new ball brought the same lack of assistance for new-ball pairing Mahmood and Kyle Jarvis, as Alsop became the third successive Hampshire batsman to reach fifty, this time in 91 deliveries.

In comparison to the 17 wickets to fall on the first day of the game between Somerset and Durham at Taunton, the solitary wicket to fall on the first day at the Ageas Bowl suggests that this game is highly likely to finish in a high-scoring draw, but if Hampshire can pile on the pressure with an imposing first-innings total, the hosts could extract a vital win in their bid to avoid relegation.