The second half of Hampshire's Championship season began inauspiciously against Warwickshire at the Rose Bowl.

With another poor Twenty20 Cup campaign behind them and Shane Warne back at the helm, Hampshire resumed Championship action after a two-week break, determined to begin an assault on the title, only for Warwickshire to dominate the first day's play.

There is no love lost between Warwickshire and Hampshire.

Warne inspired Hampshire to a second Lord's final in three years in the Friends Provident Trolphy semi-final against the same opponents at the Rose Bowl in his last outing two-and-a-half weeks ago.

And a few days later, a cheeky aside in his Times column revealed he would be happy to talk to Ian Bell if the England batsman wanted to switch counties following the England batsman's surprise omission from the Warwickshire side that day.

It is also no secret that Warne and Warwickshire director of cricket Mark Greatbatch do not get on. After the sides failed to agree on a last-day run chase during their previous Championship meeting at Edgbaston in May, Warne referred to the New Zealander as "a pretty negative sort of person".

It is fair to say that Greatbatch would have been the happier of the two Antipodeans last night.

Warne took some time to find his range. He still finished with a respectable 0-60 from his 22 overs but it is likely to take a day or two before he finds the form that he showed in Hampshire's last Championship match.

That was always likely to be the case and it is regrettable in some ways that his mid-season break from the Championship began after he had taken 11 wickets, his best haul for Hampshire, in the win against Durham on June 18.

A lack of momentum has been the story of Hampshire's season in the longest form of the game and Warne's understandable rustiness meant a handful of full tosses littered his 22 overs.

The Hampshire captain is still likely to be a handful in Warwickshire's second innings, but he missed Stuart Clark badly yesterday.

Any side will miss a player of Clark's class and well though James Tomlinson bowled, he cannot be expected to fill the void left by the best fast bowler in the world.

At least the decision not to replace Clark - so far at least - gives Hampshire an idea of what to expect next season when the quota of overseas players goes back to one per county.

With a useful battery of fast bowlers in need of experience waiting in the wings, it was good to see three homegrown quicks in Chris Tremlett, James Bruce and Tomlinson given the chance to operate alongside Warne.

But it was the rare sight of Michael Carberry's off spin that provided Hampshire with the vital partnership breaker on a day with which Warwickshire dominated from the moment Maddy won the toss.

Maddy's unbeaten 121 (263 balls) was the highlight of a day curtailed by rain (14 overs were lost to the elements) and his second-wicket partnership with Jonathan Trott was looking increasingly threatening before the unlikely figure of Carberry made the breakthrough in his third over.

Nic Pothas had only just left the field with the suspected fracture of the left eye socket that has ruled him out of the rest of this match when Carberry dismissed Trott for 50 (133 balls) in the same over, the 63rd.

Trott responded to being left out of all three one-day internationals against the West Indies by putting on 119 for the second wicket with Maddy before he popped a bat-pad catch to Michael Brown at short leg.

Dimitri Mascarenhas, having been the most economical of England's bowlers during the ODI series (his 22 overs against the Windies cost just 77 runs), made the initial breakthrough in the 19th over when Ian Westwood (23) nicked a ball angled across him and a diving Pothas took a left-handed catch.

But it was another 44 overs before Carberry broke Maddy and Trott's partnership with his third wicket for Hampshire in his 28th first-class over for the county.

However, a poor afternoon session continued when Warne was wrongfooted at slip following the latest of cuts against Carberry from Maddy, who escaped on 94 in the last over before tea with the score 200-2.

The Warwickshire skipper had to endure the second interval on 99 but reached three figures for the second time in the Championship this season, from 229 balls, by clipping Bruce for two through mid-wicket in the second over of the final session.

Jim Troughton looked determined to make up for his dismissal against Warne in the Friends Provident Trophy semi final.

That match swung in Hampshire's favour when Troughton was outsmarted by Hampshire's captain, but the left hander has happier memories from the Rose Bowl in the Championship - he scored his maiden first-class hundred here - and he helped Maddy put on 86 in 24 overs yesterday.

He was out for 44 (76 balls) when he nicked to substitute wicketkeeper Burrows in Tremlett's second over with the new ball, but Maddy is still there and after scoring a second hundred in a Championship season for the first time since 2002, he will be determined to build on his his unbeaten 121 today.

He said: "This was my fourth hundred in all competitions this season and I'm very pleased with the way I played.

"Before the start we talked about the importance of patience. It's a good pitch, but it's slow and it's started to turn a bit already.

"Hopefully our three spinners will bowl well on it. We can also learn by the way they've bowled. I think we should probably try to bowl more wicket-to-wicket and Naqaash Tahir could have a big role to play on this pitch."

Tremlett 19.2-4-51-1, Bruce 13-4-47-0, Tomlinson 12-3-29-0, Mascarenhas 14-4-28-1, Warne 22-1-60-0, Carberry 9-1-35-1, Lumb 1-0-4-0