Rothesay County Championship, Division One, Uptonsteel Grace Road, Leicester (day four)
Hampshire 214 & 363: Gubbins 133; A Patel 4-103
Leicestershire 244 & 335-5: Kelly 86, Cox 75*
Leicestershire (19 pts) beat Hampshire (3 pts) by five wickets
Hampshire have been relegated to Division Two of the County Championship for the first time since winning promotion in 2014 after Leicestershire completed a five-wicket win at Uptonsteel Grace Road.
New Zealand international Nick Kelly and wicketkeeper Ben Cox did the heavy lifting for Leicestershire, backing up skipper Ian Holland’s nine-wicket contribution to the win by sharing a 158-run fifth-wicket partnership as the home side chased down the 334 they needed to win.
It wrapped up victory by 14:05 BST with only two wickets lost on the final day.
The result means Leicestershire retain a mathematical chance of survival going into the final week of the season despite the 27-point penalty they were handed on Wednesday for preparing a sub-standard pitch for last month’s win over Glamorgan, although it is a near certainty that they too will be playing in Division Two next year.
While the punishment remains subject to appeal, the only way Leicestershire can avoid going down is by wrecking Warwickshire’s anticipated title celebrations with victory at Edgbaston next week and in doing so taking 20 more points than Essex pick up from their concluding fixture, away to Glamorgan.
The Foxes, who ended a 23-year-exile from Division One when they were promoted as Division Two champions last season, began the final day needing 178 more runs for victory, with Hampshire looking to take seven more wickets to keep their season alive.
With home supporters eager for the boost of a victory ahead of Sunday’s One-Day Cup final against Middlesex, Kelly began with two eye-catching cover drives off Scott Currie for a couple of early boundaries.
Leicestershire suffered a setback as Hamza Shaikh, defending, was caught behind off a thin outside edge, giving Kyle Abbott his 62nd wicket of the campaign.
Yet it became clear the pitch – prepared in much the same away as the offending Glamorgan strip with grass in the middle and two shaved ends – had become somewhat less hazardous for the batting side than earlier in the contest.
Moreover, Hampshire struggled to contain them in any meaningful way. Off-spinner Felix Organ offered control at one end, Abbott was as disciplined as ever and James Fuller tidy, but Manny Lumsden, the 17-year-old who bowled so impressively against Nottinghamshire last week, rarely hit the right lengths this time and leaked runs as a consequence.
The fifth-wicket pair found enough singles too to keep the scoreboard moving without risking too much.
After Cox, who looks unlikely to be with the county next season, had driven Lumsden to the off-side rope to bring the requirement down to exactly 100, Kelly completed his third half-century in Leicestershire colours. Three boundaries then conceded by Lumsden in the final over of the morning left the home side just 67 runs from victory.
Soon afterwards Cox, who has been almost flawless behind the stumps all season, also passed 50 from 76 balls and even the return of Abbott and Currie with the new ball did not change the direction of travel, although there was a reminder the surface still had the capacity to surprise when the left-hander Kelly took a nasty blow on his right-hand.
A couple of painkillers later, though, he was back in full flow, hammering four boundaries in the same over off the unfortunate Lumsden.
Although he was ultimately caught on the rope aiming to finish things in style, the job was all but done, with Cox hitting what turned out to be the winning boundary off a Lumsden no-ball, his eighth of the match.
ECB Reporters’ Network supported by Rothesay.
