Peering down from the mountain top has ill-suited Nottinghamshire this season. As long-time leaders of the NatWest Pro40, they lost four of their last five games to hand the title to Sussex. Yesterday, at the summit again in the LV County Championship, they exhibited further signs of acrophobia with a nervy first-innings batting performance that threatened to derail their title aspirations. With Durham and Somerset clambering close to the peak, Nottinghamshire face an anxious couple of days.

Chris Read's decision to field first was always loaded with risk, given the dry nature of the pitch and the presence of a decent leg spinner in Hampshire's ranks, and having skittled the visiting side for 203, he would have hoped for a first-innings lead of a hundred or more.

As it was, after an extraordinary mid-afternoon collapse in which seven wickets fell for 39 runs, Nottinghamshire's lead proved to be a slender one. By the close, an advantage of eight had become a deficit of 94 and given that Hampshire have nine second-innings wickets in hand, the match has tilted in their favour.

Such a predicament appeared unlikely midway through the afternoon session, when Samit Patel and Ashwell Prince were in the process of constructing a 116-run partnership. Nine Test match centuries separate these two diminutive players, but yesterday it was Patel who looked the class act. Compact and well balanced at the crease, with fast hands and footwork to match, Patel's strokeplay was on a different plane from anybody else in the game.

Twelve fours adorned his fifty, all of them sweetly struck, and it came as an utter surprise when he drilled James Tomlinson straight to Chris Tremlett at mid-off. If he had known what was to follow, he might have reined in his exuberance.

Prince was a humble sparrow to Patel's soaring eagle, although Nottinghamshire would have been thankful for the South African's gritty professionalism on a day when he was never at his best. He was dropped on 21 at cover by Michael Carberry, on 43 at long-on by the hapless Tremlett, was caught off a no-ball on 25 and throughout batting appeared to be a difficult business.

As was evident earlier in the summer, however, Prince is a difficult man to prise from the crease and he guided Nottinghamshire to their solitary batting bonus point before, with the last man for company, he holed out to deep cover.

In between the wickets of Patel and Prince, Imran Tahir created havoc with his entertaining combination of briskly bowled leg spinners, googlies and flippers. The Pakistan influence is obvious because his action is a mix of Abdul Qadir and Shahid Afridi. On this evidence he is not as good as the former (not many are), but has more variety than the latter. With Mushtaq Ahmed's absence hurting Sussex, Ian Salisbury in the ascendance for Warwickshire and Tahir chiefly responsible for Hampshire's late-season rally, the value of a good leggie cannot be overstated.

The fuss made over his appearance for this match looked ill-founded when his first three overs went for 26, but leg spinners are mercurial types and, as tea approached, he made Patel pay dearly for his mistake. Graeme Swann was the first of his four victims, undone by extra bounce as he tried to cut a googly; Mark Ealham the second, bamboozled by a flipper and palpably leg-before; Andre Adams the third, a well-disguised googly ghosting through an absent defence. Ditto Darren Pattinson.

As Nottinghamshire are finding out, getting to the mountain top is the easy part; staying there is a lot harder.

Scoreboard

Hampshire: First Innings (overnight 199-9)
Imran Tahir not out 24
J A Tomlinson c Read b Shreck 3
Extras (b 1, lb 4) 5
Total (88.4 overs) 203

Fall of wickets: 1-46, 2-53, 3-63, 4-74, 5-96, 6-96, 7-151, 8-166, 9-177.

Bowling: Shreck 18.4-6-48-4; Pattinson 20-9-46-3; Adams 15-6-26-2; Ealham 16-2-41-1; Swann 15-5-22-0; Patel 4-0-15-0.

Second Innings
M A Carberry c Read b Adams 24
M J Brown not out 51
M J Lumb not out 25
Extras (lb 2) 2
Total (1 wkt, 35 overs) 102

Fall of wicket: 1-52.

Bowling: Shreck 7-2-15-0; Pattinson 6-0-33-0; Ealham 4-1-10-0; Adams 7-0-28-1; Swann 7-1-10-0; Patel 4-1-4-0.

Nottinghamshire: First Innings
W I Jefferson lbw b Mascarenhas 26
B M Shafayat lbw b Mascarenhas 0
M A Wagh lbw b Tomlinson 29
S R Patel c Tremlett b Tomlinson 70
A G Prince c Carberry b Tremlett 57
G P Swann c Pothas b Tahir 9
*†C M W Read c Lumb b Tomlinson 5
M A Ealham lbw b Tahir 0
A R Adams b Tahir 0
D J Pattinson b Tahir 0
C E Shreck not out 0
Extras (b 1, lb 1, w 1, nb 12) 15
Total (56.1 overs) 211

Fall of wickets: 1-0, 2-56, 3-56, 4-172, 5-183, 6-192, 7-193, 8-193, 9-197.

Bowling: Tremlett 11.1-5-30-1; Mascarenhas 12-3-38-2; Tomlinson 14-6-56-3; Tahir 13-3-55-4; Ervine 6-0-30-0.

Umpires: T E Jesty and R A Kettleborough.