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
Match scorecard
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.