HAMPSHIRE captain James Vince insisted Essex bowler Simon Harmer “exploited conditions” and prevented finding the best team after their County Championship defeat at ECG.

Off-spinner Harmer returned his best first-class match haul with 15 wickets for 207 runs across the two innings, stopping Hampshire 12 runs short of their 299 target.

Hampshire were only three points behind County Championship leaders Surrey going into the contest, but couldn’t handle the South African on a spicier pitch.

Felix Organ’s 65, and contributions from Ian Holland, Ben Brown, Aneurin Donald, Keith Barker and Kyle Abbott got them unbelievably close to their 299-run target.

“Second innings we got the highest score of the game by 40 or 50 runs,” Vince reflected. “Due to the conditions you had to play pretty village cricket really and try and attack the short side and hope you got lucky.

“The pitch from day one was spinning a hell of a lot, the disappointing thing today we spoke about how crucial the new ball was, maybe from the spin rather than the seam. I think we did that particularly well, being 97 for none, and as the ball got older it spun less.

“They changed balls a couple of times, we had one that came out after 30 overs with writing on it and it they got six wickets in next to no time and the ball started seaming around from the other side as well.”

He continued: “All the effort that we put in to get to that stage where we felt the game was in our hands then got taken away from us, along with a few decisions that didn’t go our way as well.

“It leaves a bitter taste, especially after getting so close, but the guys put in a magnificent effort to get as close as we did and some uncontrollables there that prevented us from getting all the points.”

On Fuller’s haul, the skipper added: “Right from the word go, we initially tried to play it properly and defend the good ones but it was doing too much.

“You would never survive more than a couple overs doing that before one bounces, balls going over the shoulder on day one.

“He’s obviously a world class bowler so he’s going to exploit conditions like that, but we were hoping to come here and go man for man against a decent Essex team and have the best team come out on top – but conditions prevented that from happening.”

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