IT was supposed to be Kevin Pietersen's big day but the England star was upstaged by a member of Hampshire manager Paul Terry's winter academy.

Slow left armer Tim Phillips and Hampshire new boy Pietersen have had vastly contrasting starts to their careers.

Phillips has hardly bowled at all since 2002 because of a serious knee injury and spent five months of the winter at Terry's academy in Perth while Pietersen was announcing his arrival on cricket's world stage.

But their paths collided at the Rose Bowl and it was Phillips who came out on top.

Pietersen was warmly applauded by the 2,000 crowd as he made his way out to the crease for his first innings since February 13th, when he smashed 116 from 110 balls for England against South Africa at Centurion Park.

The Hampshire new boy smashed ten fours and six sixes before being awarded the man of the match award on that occasion.

But sadly his Rose Bowl entrance was not as spectacular as his introduction to the international stage.

Pietersen took seven balls to get off the mark with a single off Phillips.

But he had made only five when he tried to whip his 14th ball through midwicket and was effectively yorked by the slow left- armer, who struck his middle and leg stumps.

The 24-year-old looked as disappointed as the bumper crowd as he trudged off in the 23rd over and in the middle of a Hampshire collapse that saw the hosts lose their last eight wickets for 69 runs on the way to a 16-run rain-affected Duckworth Lewis defeat.

The memories of their ten-wicket defeat at Chelmsford in a friendly against Essex a fortnight ago must have occupied Hampshire minds as Phillips (3 for 31) added the wickets of Simon Katich and Nic Pothas.

Those scalps gave 24-year-old Phillips career-best figures in his first one day match since the end of the 2002 season.

The scalp of Katich (38) was just as crucial as that of Pietersen to Essex's cause and the Australian followed his potential Ashes adversary back in to the home dressing room two overs later when he chopped an attempted square cut on to his own stumps.

Katich had been dropped before he had troubled the scorers when he drove Alex Tudor to Graham Napier at mid-off in the first over.

He went on to share in a 61-run second wicket stand with Sean Ervine, who made 34 from 38 balls, but ran out his new teammate to spark the loss of eight Hampshire wickets in 22 overs.

John Crawley made a run-a-ball 18 and Chris Tremlett's unbeaten 22 helped sett Essex a respectable 175 for 9.

But despite dismissing both Ronnie Irani and Grant Flower cheaply, Hampshire failed to keep Essex behind the Duckworth Lewis rate as the rain fell.

And it was Will Jefferson - who spent the 2003-04 winter improving his batting under the tutelage of Terry in Perth - who stroked an unbeaten 44 from 48 balls to secure a 16-run win.

It was not the news one Hampshire fan would have wanted to hear.

A £4,000 each-way bet was placed on Hampshire to win the totesport League by a mystery punter in Portsmouth last week, and the £8,000 stake would win him £46,200 if Shane Warne's men win the county's first one-day title since 1986.