MAN­CHES­TER–Fast bowler Tino Best grabbed his 13th five-wick­et haul in first class crick­et but Hamp­shire were still fac­ing an up­hill task against Lan­cashire, head­ing in­to to­day's penul­ti­mate day of their Coun­ty Cham­pi­onship en­counter at Old Traf­ford.

The 34-year-old for­mer West In­dies speed­ster, in on­ly his sec­ond game for the vis­i­tors, fin­ished with five for 90 as Lan­cashire were dis­missed for 456 af­ter re­sum­ing the day on 157 for one.At the close yes­ter­day, Hamp­shire were 22 for one, still re­quir­ing a fur­ther 325 runs to avoid an in­nings de­feat.

Hamp­shire's woes be­gan on Sun­day's open­ing day when they were dis­missed cheap­ly for 109, and their mis­ery con­tin­ued on the sec­ond day when Luke Proc­ter struck his sec­ond first class hun­dred and South African Alvi­ro Pe­tersen and open­er Haseeb Hameed gath­ered half-cen­turies.

Proc­ter, un­beat­en on 48 overnight, made 137 and added 173 for the sec­ond wick­et with Hameed who made 62 and a fur­ther 123 for the third wick­et with Pe­tersen who stroked 81.

Lan­cashire were cruis­ing to­wards a mas­sive to­tal at 349 for two when Best in­ter­vened with a su­perb spell, tak­ing four con­sec­u­tive wick­ets as the hosts slid to 378 for six in the space of just 46 de­liv­er­ies.Right-armer Best ac­count­ed for Proc­ter and Pe­tersen, and al­so re­moved cap­tain Steven Croft cheap­ly for 12 and Liam Liv­ing­stone with­out scor­ing.

Bat­ting a sec­ond time, Hamp­shire lost open­er Jim­my Adams with­out scor­ing.

Best was signed by Hamp­shire less than a month ago as a re­place­ment for fel­low Bar­ba­di­an Fi­del Ed­wards, who broke his an­kle while warm­ing up on the fi­nal morn­ing of their clash with York­shire last month.

CMC