The half-centuries racked up diligently by Jake Lehmann and Ben Brown stood out like beacons amid a sea of single digits on the scorecard as Hampshire’s season continued to implode.

Lehmann, despite only just returning from a dash home to Australia for unspecified personal reasons, recorded his fifth successive Rothesay County Championship fifty to reach 425 runs from seven innings this summer. His 105-run fifth-wicket stand with captain Brown was the only one of real substance as bottom-of-the-table Hampshire subsided to 235 all out.

Lehmann managed to hang around for 164 balls in compiling 89, while Brown’s 73 came from 116 balls. Otherwise, 18-year-old Ben Mayes’s 20 was the only other contribution in double figures as Hampshire batsmen found nefarious ways of getting out.

England prospective candidate Sam Cook took a trio of top-order wickets to finish with 3 for 56 before Wiaan Mulder wrapped up the tail with post-tea figures of 3 for 12 as the final five wickets fell in just 37 balls. In 22 overs in the evening, Essex reduced the deficit by 51 for the loss of Paul Walter, caught behind dangling his bat out to Kyle Abbott, and Dean Elgar, tucked up by a short-pitched delivery from James Fuller and dollying up a catch.

Essex’s decision to put Hampshire in on a green-top was quickly vindicated as Cook struck twice in five balls as early as the sixth over. Toby Albert was too late on to a ball that would have hit off-stump, departing lbw, and Tom Prest lost his off stump to one that jagged back.

Nick Gubbins had tried to play a holding role, but after scratching his way to eight from 28 balls his exaggerated forward lunge only succeeded in depositing the delivery from Shane Snater into the hands of a diving gully.

Lehmann and Ben Mayes steadied the ship in a 55-run stand for the fourth wicket, with neither looking discomfited until the 18-year-old Mayes fell to the last delivery before lunch, taken low down at second slip for Cook’s third wicket.

But if the morning session was Essex’s, the afternoon definitely belonged to Hampshire. Lehmann reached his latest half-century after the interval with an eighth boundary, pulling Simon Harmer through midwicket. And in Brown he found a pugnacious foil as the pair exchanged boundaries to wrest the initiative away from the home side. The Hampshire captain even charged down the pitch to loft Harmer for six over long leg.

With his two-eyed stance reminiscent of the Indian Farokh Engineer in the 1970s, Lehmann picked off the Essex bowlers with ease. Almost nonchalantly he cut Wiaan Mulder for four and next instant despatched the ball backward of square for another boundary, on both occasions not even bothering to set off for a run.

However, Brown had just brought up the century partnership in an hour and a half when Jamie Porter finally found a way past Lehmann’s imposing pads to knock off the bails. In all he hit 15 fours.

Straight after tea, an out-of-form Liam Dawson became Mulder’s first wicket since his own brief return to South Africa for personal reasons when he pegged back middle stump. And two balls after launching Harmer for six over midwicket, Fuller followed with a loose drive straight back to the bowler.

The pendulum continued to swing back Essex’s way. Scott Currie lasted two balls before he played a ball into the covers, hesitated fatally as Charlie Allison swooped and was run out by a distance as he tried to beat the throw to Mulder at the non-striker’s end. Mulder induced a leading edge from Brown to end an innings containing nine fours and a six, and then had a hand in a fourth wicket when he wrapped up the innings by trapping Codi Yusuf lbw.