The bookies will give you 20-1 on Sussex winning the National League second division. Those odds aren't likely to be shortened much after this dismal start.

Both director of cricket Peter Moores and skipper Chris Adams have made optimistic noises about the side fulfilling their potential in one-day cricket and it's obviously foolish to write them off after one game on a pitch offering as much help to seamers as is possible which Adams will mark 'poor' in his report.

But the scenario at the Rosebowl was all too familiar to those who saw the county win just four times in the competition last season.

Chasing Hampshire's 144-9, Sussex were well placed at 51-1, but they lost their last nine wickets for 50 runs in 21 overs and were condemned to a 43-run defeat.

The reply began solidly enough. Richard Montgomerie and Tim Ambrose were only scoring at two runs an over, but against someone with the skill and experience of Wasim Akram on a pitch where the ball darted about off the seam all day it was a sensible enough approach.

Montgomerie was lbw to Chris Tremlett in the 12th over, but the decision to send Kevin Innes up the order could be considered a success. He helped put on 21 in the next three overs, with Ambrose pulling James Hamblin over mid-wicket for six to bring up the 50.

But then it all started to go wrong. Innes and Ambrose went leg before in successive overs and Hampshire were celebrating the crucial wicket of Adams in the 19th when the Sussex captain played his off drive too early and looped up a catch to cover, departing just in time to see his beloved Arsenal surrender the Premiership title.

The rot had set in and Shaun Udal, exploiting turn and bounce at the Northern End, took three wickets in three overs to more or less end Sussex hopes. Murray Goodwin was rendered virtually strokeless by the pitch and accuracy of the bowling, scoring his 18 runs in 12 overs before holing out to long on while Robin Martin-Jenkins was bowled by a shooter from Tremlett.

Michael Yardy, making his first appearance of the season, and Mushtaq fell in the same over from the off-spinner and Sussex's day was just about summed up when Billy Taylor was run out by Dimitri Mascerenhas's direct hit from mid-wicket to end the innings with 8.4 overs unused.

Adams was scathing in his assessment of the pitch. He said: "It was very poor. The remit for one-day cricket is to produce good, flat surfaces but that one was anything but. We did well to restrict them to 144-9 and I would back us nine times out of ten to get that score, but we obviously found batting harder than they did."

It was hardly a surprise that Taylor had been the pick of the Sussex attack earlier in the day.

Winchester-born Taylor, making his first appearance of the season, invariably performs at his best against the county which once rejected him. Last year he took 4-22 in similar conditions at the Rosebowl, having taken 3-26 earlier in the season when Sussex won in the Benson and Hedges Cup at Hove.

He went wicketless in his first spell, but returned to take three wickets in two overs at the end of the innings. He bowled Mascarenhas with the second ball of the 41st over to end a stand of 34 for the seventh wicket with Nic Pothas, the biggest of the match, before claiming the prized scalp of Akram who was caught behind in the same over mis-timing a pull.

Udal sliced a drive to third man in the final over to give Taylor his third wicket in the final over, but he wasn't the only Sussex seamer to relish the conditions.

Martin-Jenkins accounted for John Crawley in the third over with seam movement and James Kirtley struck in the next when Derek Kenway was lbw shuffling half-forward.

Martin-Jenkins thought he'd removed Simon Katich in the seventh over to a slip catch, but Katich was given the benefit of the doubt after consultations between the umpires, much to the disgust of Adams who was convinced Montgomerie had made clean catch and told the Australian so in no uncertain terms. It didn't matter. Katich was leg before to Kirtley in the next over and Hampshire were 23-3.

Robin Smith organised something of a fightback with what proved to be a match-winning 44.

Hampshire won by 43 runs