Hampshire took five wickets in 11 overs after tea to boost their promotion hopes on the opening day of their LV County Championship match against Leicestershire.

Bottom-of-the-table Leicestershire are without an LV County Championship win for two years and have not won away from home since 2010.

But Angus Robson, younger brother of Sam, made an unbeaten century in his 16th first-class match to give the visitors hope of a sizeable total before they closed on 301-9.

Leicestershire were 58-3 within an hour of winning the toss, with Matt Coles finding the outside edges of Greg Smith and Ned Eckersely before Dan Redfern nicked a drive against Chris Wood to first slip.

But Coles failed to build on his early success with any consistency as Robson made 115 (265 balls, 17 fours).

Robson’s partnerships of 116 with Josh Cobb (52) and 74 with Niall O’Brien put Leicestershire in charge before the latter both fell to Hampshire’s excellent slow left-armers.

Cobb was bowled attempting to cut Danny Briggs’ arm ball. And O’Brien, having made 44 on the ground where he stunned Hampshire with a match-winning century in the Royal London One-Day Cup a few weeks earlier, nicked Liam Dawson to first slip.

His dismissal was the start of a post-tea collapse that saw Leicestershire lose five wickets for 29 runs.

Rob Taylor, having already offered a chance, became Dawson’s second victim in three balls when he was stumped after advancing down the wicket.

Then Tomlinson struck twice in three overs with the second new ball. Ervine had dropped Robson on 77 off Tomlinson but made sure he caught the second chance.

After a Coles off-cutter trapped Jigar Naik lbw in the following over, Tomlinson dived forward to catch Alex Wyatt off his own bowling.

Adams said: “Given they won the toss we shared today but we could have done better. We missed a couple of chances that, had we taken them, would have pegged them back to 250.

“The wicket looks reasonably placid. If batters applied themselves like Robson it was tough for the bowlers.”