FOR the second successive season the Riverside provided the perfect pitch for a Hampshire run-chase, allowing the visitors to beat Durham by seven wickets yesterday.

What a pity the compliment has not been returned. Losing the toss has been crucial for Durham on the unsatisfactory surfaces at Basingstoke and West End.

After also winning at Chester-le-Street in 1999, this was in fact Hampshire's fifth successive championship win against Durham.

They had to make 214 in 53 overs yesterday and cruised home against some pretty lacklustre bowling. There were also several examples of shoddy fielding.

While Hampshire's sixth win left them in a strong position to return to the first division, Durham's sixth defeat left them in grave danger of finishing next to the bottom.

In Durham's defence, the decisive part of this match was when they lost four top batsmen for 12 runs in difficult conditions on the rain-hit third day.

Nor were they helped yesterday by five of their six remaining batsmen being given out lbw, while the only appeal which went in their favour came when Hampshire needed five to win.

"I'm not one to yelp about umpiring decisions, but the ones against Andrew Pratt and Danny Law were particularly disappointing," said coach Martyn Moxon.

Both those decisions were given by former Darlington RA professional Tony Clarkson.

Durham didn't help themselves by again opening up with Stephen Harmison and Danny Law, who had combined figures of none for 61 in eight overs in last Wednesday's floodlit clash.

Opener Giles White commented prior to Hampshire resuming their first innings on Saturday morning that getting over the new ball would be the difficult bit.

In fact, it proved the easy part as neither Harmison nor Law bowled in the right areas and it was a similar story yesterday as White and Jason Laney scored 32 off eight overs before Durham turned to James Brinkley.

With the atmosphere not encouraging the swing, Brinkley bowled four overs for 14 runs before making way for Graeme Bridge. And by the time Nicky Hatch was introduced after 17 overs the batsmen were in full cry.

Laney was in the team only because Derek Kenway has a foot injury, but he relished the chance to be in one-day mode and hit seven fours in a 66-ball half-century.

The opening stand had reached 110 in the 27th over when he fell for 60, well caught by Martin Love at slip when trying to force Bridge away off the back foot. White then took the total to 185 with Will Kendall before he was bowled for 74, going for a big hit off Bridge.

Harmison returned with a hostile spell when Hampshire had all but won and a rare full-length ball had Kendall lbw for 54 when only five were needed off five overs.

Robin Smith and Neil Johnson took only one off each of the next three overs, and Smith was dropped at mid-wicket off Bridge before he cracked the winning boundary off Harmison.

The ease with which Bridge had earlier recorded his third career-best of the match - one for bowling, two for batting - suggested Durham hadn't got enough when they were all out for 202.

After totalling 12 runs in seven innings, Bridge made 31 and 39 not out, but Durham needed a bigger contribution from one of their overnight batsmen if they were to set a really challenging target.

Resuming on 43, Love clipped James Schofield through mid-wicket for his fifth four to reach 50 off 104 balls. But on 52 he inexplicably shouldered arms and was lbw to Alex Morris.

While Morris's first four overs were maidens, Law opened up with a couple of cracking cover drives off Schofield. But after moving on from 26 to 42 the same bowler had him lbw with a ball which kept a shade low.

There was nothing low about the ball from Dimitri Mascarenhas which had Andrew Pratt lbw on the back foot for 14. In fact, it looked in considerable danger of passing over the stumps, but the lbw decisions continued with Brinkley and Harmison going the same way.

Morris finished with a career-best 5-39 and it might have been better had Robin Smith not kept replacing him with Johnson, whose only real contribution with the ball was to poleaxe Nicky Peng, who was again off the field yesterday.

Johnson repeated the first innings nonsense of stationing three men on the leg-side boundary and bowling short. He struck Hatch on the body, but the No 11 retaliated by clubbing him for four.

It was just about Durham's last defiant act and they will have to dig deep to find renewed spirit on the journey to Hove today to face table-topping Sussex