Sunny it may have been, at least until the brooding clouds edged their way in an hour after tea and brought a premature end to proceedings, but this was not a pleasant day to be playing cricket, let alone watching anoraked and huddled in the stands. A spring wind biffed across the ground so that trousers flapped like sails on the Solent, and hands were jammed into pockets lest a finger‑cracking new‑ball sizzler fizzed to the slips.
By the time the players drifted to the sanctuary of the dressing rooms it was Hampshire, at 189 for eight, who had turned the day on its head. Embarrassed by Keith Barker and the new ball, they had found themselves variously at 59 for six before lunch and 87 for seven not long after it. Already Warwickshire, fancied championship contenders, were sitting pretty, bossing the game. Then it changed.
The support bowling to Barker looked rusty and Ryan McLaren, a robust left‑hander with five first-class centuries to his name, began to take charge, with some strong driving when the bowlers pitched the ball up and some neat deflections when they did not.
McLaren, who survived a sharp chance to slip when 72, will resume his innings on 84 – from 147 balls, with 10 fours – and will be looking for a continuation of the lower‑order support that has allowed him to progress from the 17 he had when the seventh wicket fell. It came from unlikely sources. Reece Topley, newly arrived from Essex, had a career average of 2.8 before the match and somehow was seen as a No9 on the strength of it. But he hung in sensibly and made 15, his highest first-class score, before Chris Woakes removed his offstump with an inswinger.
James Tomlinson was then made to hop around and the more he did, poking his bat outside off stump as if prodding a wasps’ nest with a stick, the more the Warwickshire bowlers hammered away at the middle of the pitch. Certainly he rode his luck, being dropped twice in the close cordon, but like Topley, has reached 15. Hampshire will feel that they are back in the game now, and both Topley and Fidel Edwards could provide an early challenge for the experienced Warwickshire top-order batsmen.
Quite what a good score is on this pitch is hard to gauge. There was no obvious green tinge to it at the start but Ian Bell, as he is entitled to do thanks to the new one-season experiment in the county championship, opted to field first, thus removing the need for a coin toss. This is a rule brought in with the best of intentions, designed to stop home sides from tickling pitches to their advantage and perhaps bring spinners into the game more. But it is a clumsy concept.
At this time of year, when the pitches will in any case be damp (for evidence, look at the bowlers’ dark footmarks), sides would mostly consider putting the opposition in regardless. So although there may be some merit to it later in the year, perhaps when there is an urgency to seek results through playing to strengths and sides deliberately leave extra grass on pitches, it looks as if the home side will actually be penalised rather than the balance being restored.
In fact Hampshire’s early travails had little to do with the pitch, which, judging by the pace and carry, looked a decent one. There was certainly no extravagant movement off the seam, beyond that which might normally be expected from a new ball at this time of year. Barker, though, is a shrewd operator from left-arm over-the-wicket. The breeze, blowing from left to right and slightly into his face, was a help to his natural swing, at a lively fast-medium pace, and it was this more than anything that did for the batsmen. Five for 27 at one stage, he finished the day with five for 44. The back-up, by contrast, looked largely mundane, short of a competitive gallop, with a wicket apiece for Boyd Rankin, Woakes and Rikki Clarke.
