Dawson stars with the ball for Hants (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Dawson stars with the ball for Hants

7:00pm Thursday 26th April 2012 in Southampton By Simon Walter , Senior Sports Reporter

LIAM Dawson claimed three wickets in an LV County Championship match for the first time in his career – on the day Hampshire left Danny Briggs out of the side.

The slow left-armer had only taken 17 Championship wickets since making his debut in 2007 before being handed the ball with less than an hour of the opening day against Leicestershire remaining.

Dawson finished with three for 13 from 7.2 overs as the visitors closed on 159 for six – having been 146-3. Leicestershire lost four wickets for 13 runs in 38 balls with Dawson claiming most of them during his inspired spell from the Northern End.

He began by bowling opening bat Greg Smith (68) and Ramnaresh Sarwan (46) followed in his next over, top edging a cut to slip where Sean Ervine palmed the ball skywards before holding on to the rebound.

Dawson’s previous Championship scalp was Sarwan’s former West Indies teammate Shivnarine Chanderpaul last September.

And after Kadeer Ali became Chris Wood’s 50th first-class victim, Dawson’s dismissal of Nadeem Malik, lbw for one, ended play for the day.

Dawson took a career-best seven-wicket haul in Zimbabwe during the winter and also took three cheap wickets against Loughborough MCCU earlier this month.

But to do so on the rain-affected opening day of a Championship match that began with England slow left-armer Danny Briggs left out because of the unhelpful conditions was impressive to say the least.

The other talking point on a day that saw 34 overs lost to rain was the absence of captain Jimmy Adams due to what Hampshire have described as “personal reasons”.

Sean Terry, the son of former Hampshire batsman and manager Paul Terry, was called up to make his debut this morning and Simon Katich, who won the toss, is captain in Adams’ absence.