Kent beat Hampshire easily enough in the end

Rahul Dravid steered Kent safely home by six wickets in their championship win over Hampshire at Portsmouth (the last championship match to be played on the ground). After making 137 in the first innings the Indian star scored 73 n.o. as Kent won in the last over before lunch.

The visitors were already in sight of victory when the day began and they proceeded to 182-1 with no alarms in spite of another long spell by Shane Warne who bowled 32 overs without success. Shaun Udal took all four wickets which fell today. With only 23 runs needed to win Kent appeared to have an attack of nerves after Robert Key and Dravid had added 115 runs for the second wicket. He had batted some 300 minutes for his valuable 50 and was out when Warne running backwards held a top edge.

Alan Wells was l.b.w to the next ball making Kent 182-3 and twelve runs later Matthew Walker was caught in the slips. Dravid and Paul Nixon attained the remaining 11 without further problems. The former's innings lasted 202 minutes with 11 boundaries from 140 balls. Udal ended with 4-42 from 20 overs.

Admittedly the loss of young quick bowler Simon Francis through an elbow injury had hampered Hampshire, but they had suffered from poor batting on the third day.