SHANE Warne threatened to forfeit Hampshire's game with Lancashire after the Red Rose county refused to declare at the Rose Bowl.

And the Aussie spinner has accused Lancs of not playing in the spirit of cricket after a farcical finish to the County Championship.

Hampshire skipper Warne was no-balled when one of his deliveries bounced twice during an over in which he repeatedly lobbed the ball 30 feet in the air from a standing start after Lancashire failed to declare despite having a 341-run lead at lunch on the final day of their clash.

Warne instructed fast bowler Dimitri Mascarenhas to bowl leg-spin, gave wicketkeeper Nic Pothas three overs and brought on the right-handed Chris Benham to bowl an over left-handed.

"It got to the stage when they were 430-odd ahead with 60 overs left, and I was getting a little bit angry," said Warne, who bowled several overs of medium pace bouncers and even took the new ball.

"There was a good crowd here and we thought let's just have a game.

"It doesn't matter if you win or lose because they can't go higher than second and we can't go higher than third, so it would be a nice spectacle for the crowd.

"So I said we would bowl absolute lob-ups if they want more runs, so we did that for a few overs and that didn't work, so we resigned ourselves to the fact they were going to bat for the whole day.

"I thought they lost the spirit of the game. It was amazing they kept on batting like that. It was a real tragedy for the game and for the spectators that were here."

Angry fans in the 800-strong crowd, who turned up expecting the sides to set up a match with both teams having nothing to play for, jeered and slow hand-clapped as the game turned into a farce.

But Lancashire skipper Mark Chilton defended his decision, and explained he had planned to declare, until Warne's protest.

"We definitely didn't want to lose the game because we have put a lot of hard work into this season," said Chilton, who saw his side miss out on the Championship to Sussex 24 hours earlier.

"So the plan was to bat ourselves into a strong position and we did intend for Jimmy Anderson to have a bowl at some stage.

"There was a window of opportunity where I probably should have declared, but by that time Hampshire had made their protest and we felt it was inappropriate to declare given that the ball was being bowled 30 feet in the air. I just felt the protest came a bit too early.

"I then found out half-an-hour before tea that if we had decided to declare to give Jimmy a bowl then they would forfeit the game.

"Maybe I made a mistake and maybe with hindsight I would deal with that differently. It became a difficult situation and one that I will learn from.

"It's not great for anybody. I am not proud about what happened."

Things returned to normal just before tea, and Luke Sutton (111) made his second century of the season as the game fizzled out into a draw with Lancs finishing on 339-6. But Warne believes Chilton made a mistake by not declaring.

"I thought we did as much as we could possibly do to get a game," he said.

"It was a poor judgement call by the captain. They've now got six months off. Their bowlers might have been tired, but all they had to do was bowl 60 or 70 overs to make a game."

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