Nic Pothas caught his way into the Hampshire record books - then thanked the bowlers for his SEVEN catches.

The Hampshire wicketkeeper is the first to record seven dismissals in an innings for the county and yesterday he broke the record of six set on eight different occasions, most recently by John Crawley at Trent Bridge last year.

But Pothas is not a player motivated by statistics.

He said: "I didn't even know it was a record until someone said 'well done' as I came out of the changing room.

"It's nice to have records because they can stay for a long period of time, but the bowlers should take the credit. I only caught two good ones, the rest were all straightforward.

"Wicketkeepers are only as good as the bowlers. Mark Boucher was hailed as a great keeper by South Africa but he was keeping wicket to the best seam attack in the world in Lance Klusener, Alan Donald and Shaun Pollock."

Pothas had caught Lancashire's top five before handing Dimitri Mascarenhas and James Bruce the wickets of Dominic Cork and Tom Smith with two more regulation takes yesterday.

His last catch ensured that Bruce finished the innings with career best figures of 4-52.

Pothas, who caught all of Bruce's four victims, added: "Brucey bowled superbly and when you have a bowler who hits the seam like he does you're always going to get catches for the wicketkeeper.

"Brucey came on in leaps and bounds last year and is continuing that. He knows exactly what his role is now, he's not out and out fast but is well above medium and is certainly quick enough to make you jump around."

Richard Logan bounced back from a poor first day with 2-21 from six overs, including the key wicket of Glen Chapple, who followed his 3-46 with a dangerous 70 before holing out to cover as Lancashire established a first innings lead of 30, in response to Hampshire's 194.

More rain ensured that just 49.3 overs were bowled yesterday, and a draw the only likely result.

But Pothas and Bruce were not the only ones to pass milestones - Chapple became only the tenth Lancashire player to pass 5,000 runs and 500 wickets for the county.

And Michael Brown and Jimmy Adams had time to progress to 54-0 before the close, taking Hampshire 24 runs past Lancashire's 224.

Pothas believes they can become the successful opening partnership that Hampshire have been lacking.

He added: "We know how good our opening batsmen are, they looked really good in the second innings against a good attack so that's a massive bonus for us.

"But we don't get too far ahead of ourselves. We knew there was going to be rain during this match as soon as we saw that we were at Lancashire in April. We literally break everything down to a ball at a time."