Fergus O’Neill claimed four wickets as County Championship leaders Nottinghamshire piled more pressure on Hampshire’s out-of-form batting line-up.<\/p>\n
Australian quick O’Neill picked up 4-32 as bottom-placed Hampshire were left 105-6.<\/p>\n
New overseas Delano Potgieter and Felix Organ improved the situation somewhat to reach 152-6 at stumps \u2013 with 50 overs lost in the day due to rain.<\/p>\n
Hampshire have only picked up a single batting point so far this season – by reaching 251 against Yorkshire – and do not look like grabbing any out of this match.<\/p>\n
They have lost all but one of their five matches – two by an innings – and all three at home.<\/p>\n
On the flip side, Nottinghamshire have bounced off their title-winning campaign to begin the 2026 season unbeaten, to sit top of the table.<\/p>\n
The form guide was indicative of a rain-affected opening day at Utilita Bowl.<\/p>\n
Australian O’Neill went wicketless against Surrey last week but roared into action with a ferocious opening eight-over spell after the visitors had chosen to bowl first.<\/p>\n
He burst through the Hampshire top order with figures of 3-14, which was interspersed with four maidens on the bounce.<\/p>\n
Toby Albert was the first to depart when the Victorian speared one straight, full and into his pads.<\/p>\n
Hampshire’s attempt to change their relegation form was to mix the batting order around. That included moving previous number four Fletcha Middleton one up the order. He tickled behind for a 14-ball duck.<\/p>\n
Jake Lehmann had been on a heater with five 50s in a row, which was ended with a 27 at Essex. He only reached four before his Sheffield Shield rival O’Neill pinned him in front.<\/p>\n
Lyndon James replaced O’Neill and, within three overs, had Tom Prest wafting behind – before O’Neill returned after lunch to dislodge Nick Gubbins, who had stuck around for more than two hours before nicking off.<\/p>\n
Like Gubbins, captain Ben Brown took slightly more thought to dismiss, but Josh Tongue carried out a short ball plan to compel a top edge to fine leg.<\/p>\n
Another new ploy from Hampshire was to sign a new overseas. South African Codi Yusuf had proven impotent with the ball, so Potgieter had been flown in.<\/p>\n
The all-rounder showed his stickability either side of a lengthy rain delay, and added a match-high 47 with Organ, the latter doing the bulk of the scoring before bad light eventually ended the day’s play at 18:30 BST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fergus O’Neill claimed four wickets as County Championship leaders Nottinghamshire piled more pressure on Hampshire’s out-of-form batting line-up.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-673486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}