Brown Adds a Touch of Colour As Hampshire's Drab Season Continues

If, as seems likely, Hampshire are relegated this season, one of very few players who will emerge from the mess with a reputation enhanced is Michael Brown.

The 28-year-old opening batsman is one of those players who, while not the most gifted or technically correct of individuals, makes up for it with the sort of bloody-minded determination that some of his more stylish colleagues would do well to emulate. The fact he has scored approaching 700 championship runs this season, when none of his team-mates has scored 400, tells its own story, and he was at it again yesterday, grinding out another big score to frustrate the county of his birth after they had Hampshire 35-3.

That Lancashire themselves picked up four batting points represented something of a recovery in itself. Resuming on 261-5, they quickly lost Luke Sutton, caught behind fending at a Chris Tremlett delivery that bounced more than he expected, and Glen Chapple, caught at second slip pushing forward at David Balcombe. When Francois du Plessis was given out leg before well forward to James Tomlinson shortly after becoming the fourth batsman of the innings to score a half-century, Lancashire were still six runs short of 300. Dominic Cork saw them past that milestone by hitting Imran Tahir for a straight six, and had gone on to a belligerent 35 before a flat-footed flail at Tomlinson gave another catch behind.

Gary Keedy and Sajid Mahmood took the score past 350 before Keedy's slog-sweep at Tahir was caught on the midwicket boundary, giving the leg-spinner a deserved five-wicket haul on his championship debut for Hampshire.

With three overs to survive before lunch, Hampshire could have done without Du Plessis diving to his right at gully to take a brilliant one-handed catch to dismiss Sean Ervine off the bowling of Mahmood. John Crawley, in no sort of touch at all, shouldered arms to a Chapple delivery that left just one stump standing, and Michael Lumb half-heartedly drove and ended up edging a Cork delivery to leave Hampshire looking down the barrel.

In Chris Benham, however, Brown found a partner prepared to battle as hard as he was, and between them they built what is already Hampshire's second highest partnership of the season. Initially it was all about survival and picking off the occasional bad ball - Brown's fifty came off 142 balls, and included just 16 scoring shots - but while the muggy afternoon conditions helped the bowlers find some swing, they were getting little from the pitch, and as the ball got older the scoring rate picked up.

Benham's half-century came off 106 balls, but both might have perished before the close. First Brown's attempted reverse sweep at the left-armer Keedy ended up in the hands of Lou Vincent at short gully to prompt long, and as it turned out, premature celebrations. Then Benham edged Mahmood waist high between wicketkeeper and first slip. Sutton and Paul Horton just looked at each other.