Hampshire 392 (Wheater 111, Berg 99, Vince 76) and 126 for 4 (Terry 62*) beat Sussex 251 and 266 (Wright 84, Edwards 5-58) by six wickets
Scorecard
Hampshire have secured their first Championship win of the season with a six-wicket win at Hove, a ground that has now hosted its third three-day result game in a row. But this was nothing to do with the pitch: the visitors put together their best performance of the season, typified by Fidel Edwards' first five-wicket haul for the county.
Edwards' 5 for 58 was not only Hampshire's first five-for of the season, but it was also his first since taking 6 for 90 in a Test against Bangladesh, back in November 2012. That match in Khulna was his last for the West Indies across all formats and, in signing as a Kolpak player, at the age of 32, it seems that his international days are behind him. This will be his last four-day game for Hampshire before he jets off to the Caribbean Premier League on Sunday.
His spell yesterday was a reminder of the confrontational attitude he used to save for the world's best. The "you can't see me" celebration: the hair is grown out but the swagger remains. His skipper Jimmy Adams said his spell at the end of day two was the fastest he had ever seen in domestic cricket, a point backed up by the rest of the Hampshire team, who told Edwards as much in the dressing room.
Edwards was so quick last night that, when Wright decided to take him on, Adams moved one of his slips to a back-stop position for the top-edge. "I hadn't set a field like that before - maybe not since my under-10s," laughed Adams at the close. He confirmed the decision was Edwards and he was more than happy to oblige him.
Edwards' fifth wicket came this morning when he removed nightwatchman Steve Magoffin with his fourth ball before both he and Jackson Bird were put under pressure by Luke Wright and Ben Brown. Bird in particular, in his first Championship game of a season that has already been hampered with shoulder and neck injuries, struggled throughout the match.
Having started the morning session from the Sea End, Bird switched to the Cromwell Road to calamitous effect. His first four overs went for 28, with his first going for 12, as Brown took him for three consecutive boundaries.
It seemed that Wright and Brown could milk him easily until the new ball. Earlier, Brown had benefited from a poor drop from Danny Briggs, who shelled a routine catch with the batsman on 13, when he ran around to square leg for a top edge that would have given Edwards his sixth wicket. The joint hundred came off 164 balls as the complexion of the game started to change.
And then, with the lead standing at 122, it happened: the first of two brain-fades that led to a lower-order collapse of four for four.
The first came from Brown, who decided to take a risky single to the last ball of a Bird over that had already leaked 11 runs. He hit the ball to the left of cover, Will Smith, who ran around the ball to pick-up right-handed and throw down the stumps with Wright short of his ground.
Brown's misery was compounded when he became the recipient of what must have been Bird's best ball of the match: a good-to-full length ball that jumped up to say hello and take the top of his glove, giving Sean Ervine a simple low catch at first slip. He sunk to his knees as Bird streamed past him, before returning to the pavilion flanked by the rest of those on the pitch as lunch was taken early.
Ollie Robinson was the next to go, failing to take note of a deep square leg and finding him perfectly, just nine balls after the restart. With him went any realistically possible of quick runs, leaving Briggs to take his first wicket of the innings - caught bat-pad - to finish Sussex off.
With just 125 to defend, it was Magoffin or bust for the home side. Their lead man ran in, unchanged for eight overs, from the Cromwell Road End. Bats were beaten, an edge fell short of Ed Joyce at first slip and a length was pounded, but to no avail.
Jimmy Adams hit a quick 30 from 33 balls, seemingly trying to throttle the nerves out of the chase. When he departed with 51 on the board, in the 12th over, the runs came at a slower pace. Sean Terry, in his second game of the season, got some valuable time in the middle on his way to a first Championship half-century of the season and a career best in first-class cricket.
Terry can take pride in the fact that he carried his bat through this chase, while more senior heads came and went. He'll have a bruised thumb as a souvenir, for a week or so at least, after he was clocked by a sharp one from Hobden. But he and Hampshire will take that, as they finally get a win on the board.
