Paul Terry insisted that Hampshire can still win promotion after the county's winless streak continued at the Rose Bowl yesterday.
Hampshire took ten points from their draw against Gloucestershire and are now second from bottom and 26 points adrift of the third and final promotion place.
But a first championship win of the season in the next match against Northamptonshire, which begins at Wantage Road tomorrow, will keep the county's hopes of an immediate return to Division One alive.
And Terry is optimistic. He said: "You only need three or four wins to take you up the table and we can still be right up there at the end, there's no doubt about that.
"Winning breeds confidence. This draw doesn't exactly put us out of it but we're not very happy, we've let a golden opportunity to win slip by playing some poor cricket.
"We should have got a bigger lead and we didn't bowl particularly well on Sunday, although the injuries didn't help."
Hampshire finished 122 runs short of the 283 they needed for victory yesterday, with third-placed Gloucestershire three wickets short of their third win of the season.
Terry added: "We knew it was going to be hard because there was always something in the wicket for the bowlers and letting them get nearly 50 runs at the end of their innings put us out of the game.
"If we were chasing 240 we would have had a fairly good chance but we needed to take their last wicket early on and not let them score the runs that they did score.
"Losing three wickets before tea meant a draw was the best we could hope for, but it wasn't a bad wicket.
"You always expect the wicket to deteriorate a bit on the last day, you never want it to be too flat, but although there was always something in it for the bowlers only Simon Katich and John Crawley were out because of the pitch."
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