ed barnard produced an inspired afternoon spell as worcestershire bowled out hampshire for 191 on the opening day of the specsavers county championship clash at New Road.
the england lions player was largely responsible for the visitors nose-diving from 83-2 to 126-8 in the space of 12 overs.
barnard produced post lunch figures of 9-3-21-5 to give him 6-50 overall.
it was his fourth five-wicket haul of the campaign and took his championship wicket tally in 2018 to 41 – just six short of his season’s best return of 47 12 months ago.
sam northeast led a partial recovery with 48 before he was last out – caught at second slip by daryl mitchell off wayne parnell who was making his championship home debut.
worcestershire also had to battle hard for runs and reached 68-4 when play was halted 13.2 overs early because of bad light at 5.40.
the procession of post-lunch wickets started when hampshire debutant oliver soames, having grafted 32 overs for 23 runs, drove hard at barnard and nicked to mitchell at second slip.
james vince (10) perished after playing a similar shot with keeper ben cox snaffling the chance.
dillon pennington was next to strike as tom alsop (0) pushed forward and gave cox another catch.
but barnard was soon back on centre stage with another trio of wickets.
ian holland (4) was pouched at second slip by mitchell, liam dawson (4) drove to ross whiteley at cover and former worcestershire player kyle abbott (0) fell victim to a low return catch.
northeast and dale steyn (25) added 42 for the ninth wicket.
parnell ended the stand by dismissing south african compatriot steyn (25) as cox picked up his fourth catch.
hampshire had appeared to be building the platform for a substantial total during the morning session as soames and jimmy adams added 59 for the second wicket after the early departure of joe weatherley to barnard, another victim behind the stumps for cox.
both batsmen profited from surviving a dropped chance.
but josh tongue, who like pennington bowled well without much luck, broke through on the stroke of lunch by trapping adams lbw for 31 – and then barnard took centre stage after the resumption.
when worcestershire launched their reply tom fell (4) attempted to cut steyn and nicked through to keeper alsop.
joe clarke (1) was lbw to ian holland and alex milton (5) went in a similar fashion to abbott.
mitchell has an impressive record against hampshire and played some fine shots.
he survived one dropped chance on 40 but added only one more run before he was caught and bowled by edwards shortly before the players went off.
