County Championship: Hampshire look for win after making Northants follow-on

Emilio Gay's half-century was his fifty of the season for Northamptonshire

Hampshire snared 12 wickets on day three to skittle Northamptonshire for 175 and claimed full bonus points to put themselves on course to go top of County Championship Division One.

Kyle Abbott claimed 4-52 to take his season tally to 53 and remain the leading wicket-taker in Division One, while Keith Barker joined him in second with 3-41 and 1-34.

Northamptonshire were forced to follow-on after suffering a 225-run first-innings deficit, but Emilio Gay's excellent season continued with a classy 74 as the visitors ended the day on 153-3 - still 72 runs behind.

Hampshire will go at least level with leaders Surrey, who do not play in this round, with a victory moving them eight points clear.

• Relive the third day's County Championship action as it happened

After a fair batting day, conditions very much favoured bowling, with Barker, Mohammad Abbas and Abbott relentless in their probing.

With such heavy rain coming overnight and in the morning, it was a testament to Simon Lee and his groundstaff - along with the new outfield laid last winter - that play started only 45 minutes later than scheduled.

When it did Hampshire needed just five overs to make their first breakthrough.

Gay had been almost perfect in his defence the previous evening but clipped to square-leg with only three runs added.

From then on it was rather a procession, with the remaining eight wickets falling in 30 overs.

Josh Cobb pulled to short midwicket, Rob Keogh edged behind for a 10-ball duck, and Ricardo Vasconcelos - having unfurled a lovely cover drive first ball - pushed to second slip.

After lunch, James Sales was yorked to the first ball on resumption by Barker.

Luke Procter had ground out 40 at the other end with watchfulness and skill against the moving ball, but his downfall was a James Fuller over always destined to take a wicket.

Fuller, in his first over of the match, bowled two short balls to destabilise Procter, beat his outside edge before clipping the edge of the bat to the final delivery with a snorter.

Tom Taylor had attempted to dig in but edged behind, Lizaad Williams sliced to point and Ben Sanderson was bowled to wrap things innings up.

Having put on 68 in the first innings, Gay and Will Young looked unmovable when amassing 98 for the first wicket second time around.

Gay was particularly impressive in his fifth half-century of the campaign, refusing to get bogged down with crafty shot-making while still prizing his wicket.

Young was less fluent, with three-quarters of his four boundaries coming when the bowling erred onto his pads. He largely avoided playing at anything he did not need to until Ian Holland forced him to nibble at one on a fourth stump line to nick behind.

Procter was also victim to a jaffa as Barker found bounce just back of a length to also edge behind, before Gay was lbw to Fuller two overs later before bad light ended the day early.

Report supplied by the ECB Reporters' Network.