Peter Moores praised his side after Notts restricted Hampshire to 288 for six on the opening day of the Specsavers County Championship match on the Isle of Wight.

Hampshire had been 112 without loss at one stage, so the visitors could claim to have taken the honours in the second half of the day.

Moores admitted that a seventh wicket would have been well-deserved though.

“You always want more wickets but the thing I was most impressed with today was the way we went about things,” said the Head Coach.

“We really stuck to the task - and we needed to because Hampshire played good cricket. I thought we put a lot of balls in the right area. We had a couple of dropped catches, which was frustrating but we also beat the bat quite a lot.

“It was a fair reflection to get four wickets in the last session.”

Notts skipper Steven Mullaney chose to bowl first and rotated his seamers during a luckless opening session.

“We recognised in the first hour of the game that there was more in the far end (the Blackwater End) for the seamer. Steven Mullaney did a fantastic job. He got the ball seaming and held up this end, so we used our taller bowlers from the far end.”

Jake Ball made the initial breakthrough, and from then on life became tough for all of the new batsmen upon their arrival in the middle.

“It’s a good cricket pitch,” said Moores. “It’s a good wicket to bat on but there’s a good ball still in it, I think if you bowl well. Both sides got stuck in, to set up what should be a very good game.”

Moores reflected that it was still too early to comment on what a good score might be on a wicket playing host to its maiden county championship match.

“It’s difficult to tell until both sides have had a go on it. We would have liked one more and I think we feel we bowled well enough to get them seven down.

“But credit to the way Hampshire played; they got stuck in with that partnership at the end – we went past the bat enough times but couldn’t get a scrape on anything – so we’ll come back tomorrow and have another crack at them.”

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