Middlesex won the County Championship in 2016 with a hat-trick from a seamer with a double-barrelled surname and this time were left hoping for another, only to save them from relegation. Alas, Warwickshire’s Oliver Hannon-Dalby is no Toby Roland-Jones, and he could not weasel out the last three Hampshire wickets; Middlesex had gone from champions one year to relegation the next.

This was the polar opposite of the ecstasy of that heady day at Lord’s last September, a slow death for Middlesex, waiting more than five hours from their own moment of defeat to the confirmation of their demotion. After failing to take their match against Somerset to lunch on the final day, and Hampshire’s gritty grind to a draw at Edgbaston, their relegation – by a single point – was confirmed.

Somerset wasted no time securing their own survival (a remarkable escape, winning three of their last four matches), with their left-arm spinners Jack Leach – who took his fourth five-wicket haul to finish with more than 50 wickets for the second successive summer – and Roelof van der Merwe, who picked up a career-best four for 22, proving too strong for Middlesex. The pitch, a source of controversy (and much Middlesex mumbling) early in the match, was rated “below average” by the cricket liaison officer Wayne Noon, but Somerset rightly went unpunished.

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A brilliant piece of fielding, on his knees at a perilously close second slip, from Marcus Trescothick set the tone, and dismissed Stevie Eskinazi off Van der Merwe before a drifting beauty from Leach had Adam Voges caught at slip. John Simpson and Paul Stirling fell with the score on 80 to end all hope and, by 12.20, Leach was trapping Steven Finn – surely feeling vertiginous at No9 – lbw to finish the job. The tenure of Matthew Maynard, who looks set to be replaced by Jason Kerr, had ended with survival.

Middlesex were left with an agonising drive back to London. They set off with Hampshire taking lunch one wicket down after overnight rain delayed the start and sucked 16 overs – much to their advantage – from the game at Edgbaston.

However, Hampshire lost three for four immediately after the break, with a beauty from Ryan Sidebottom – a terrific find – seeing Sean Ervine caught behind, then Jeetan Patel had Tom Alsop caught behind and George Bailey lbw reverse-sweeping.

Together came James Vince and Liam Dawson to carry Hampshire a long way to saving their season with innings of very little style but plenty of substance.

Vince, who is in England’s Ashes squad, made 30. His reputation for such scores – invariably prettily compiled – precedes him, but this was not one such innings. Having zipped to 21 off 26 balls with four lovely fours – including two particularly elegant back-foot drives – he did not make it out of the 20s for a further 91 deliveries. There were no flashes, no brain-fades, just plenty of application. He and Dawson, who took 25 balls to get off the mark and made nine from 94, added 41 in 30 overs, at one stage going eight overs without a run off the bat. When Vince finally fell, to his 124th delivery – caught behind off Sidebottom when his bat seemed to hit his pad, not the ball – he had to drag himself from the field.

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“I was battling a few natural instincts,” he said, “but the way the game was set up it was clear how I had to play. When Dawson came in, we were counting down the overs. It can de difficult to curb instinct, but it’s easier when the situation dictates like that.”

The pace and swing of Sidebottom, an Australian who has a brother called Steele who plays in the AFL for Collingwood, also dismissed Dawson, driving loosely after tea to give Hampshire hope. But when Vince fell, Gareth Berg counterpunched and Ian Holland, another Australian stray who has wound up in the county game, defended for his life to see Hampshire through probing bowling from Patel and eight overs of the new ball. They are the Houdinis of county cricket, having survived by two points here, through Durham’s enforced relegation last year, and by two points in 2015.

And with that, Middlesex and their tame title defence were gone. Just two points separated them in seventh and fourth-placed Yorkshire (those are the perils of a congested top flight from which a quarter of teams are relegated), but they would do well to look beyond the points they were docked for slow over-rate in the wake of the abandonment by crossbow bolt at the Oval four weeks ago; their season-long slide runs deeper than that.

Warwickshire and Middlesex will be replaced by Nottinghamshire – for whom Chris Read played his final game – and Worcestershire, whose core of homegrown players make them hugely popular champions. Their title was secured by a seventh century of the summer for Daryl Mitchell, the old stager, and five wickets for Ravichandran Ashwin, a superb stopgap signing as overseas pro.