Chase could be seminal moment for Somerset

Mid-June is arguably too soon to write off a team's prospects for the season. Nevertheless, the final morning of Somerset's tussle with Nottinghamshire at Taunton looks set to be a seminal one for the county.

Pick off the remaining 127 runs required for victory, having been set a daunting fourth-innings chase of 401 against Nottinghamshire, and the confidence of such an achievement could course through the veins of a beleaguered team. But trip up, having at one stage been cruising on 197 for 1, and it would surely count as the most crushing of their five defeats in seven games this season.

Somerset's fightback was set in motion by their bowlers who, since shipping 300 runs in claiming their first three wickets of the match fought back with spirit to claim 17 wickets for 300 more in 65 subsequent overs. But at 274 for 5, with Jim Allenby and Peter Trego already at the crease, it will be down to those bowlers plus Michael Bates, the wicketkeeper, to haul them over the line.

"It's been an intriguing day's cricket," Matthew Maynard, Somerset's director of cricket, said. "I think we played some excellent cricket today. The old bowling attack have done themselves proud. We did brilliantly to get ourselves into this position and, at the end of the day, we are still in a position where if we can get a couple of partnerships together and see off the new ball, it's going to be a very tight finish tomorrow."

But a late collapse of 4 for 46 runs in 13 overs left Maynard conceding that Nottinghamshire had reclaimed the initiative going into the final day. "We've lost clusters of two or three wickets, where in the past we would have lost four or five," he said. "I always try and look at the positive side of it. It would have been nice to have lost one fewer wicket in the evening session. That extra wicket just puts us behind in the game."

For all the spirit they showed on a testing day, however, Somerset's composure proved about as robust as the surface tension on a millpond. For as long as Marcus Trescothick and Tom Abell were in harness, adding 129 for the first wicket with their contrasting but complimentary styles, the size of their chase caused barely a ripple of alarm.

Even Trescothick's departure, caught and bowled by a diving Samit Patel for 65, failed to create the sort of splash it might have done in his pomp five years ago. But the loss of Abell, 17 overs later was another thing entirely. For 307 deliveries, spanning two innings, 148 runs and scarcely a false stroke in six and a half hours of crease occupation, Abell had been a model of technical excellence and restraint, with confident footwork, a composure way beyond his 21 years, and with a sniper's eye for a scoring opportunity.

"He's got a fantastic temperament and a natural ability, and that's what distinguishes a lot of real, top players," Maynard said. "He's got that in abundance. To bat all the way through one innings and go out there again, for an hour short of three full days on the pitch, it's a terrific achievement." But, on 72, Abell succumbed to virtually his first false stroke of the match, a loose drive at Will Gidman to be caught at a very precisely positioned Steven Mullaney at straight mid-off, and the effect was like plunging a tombstone into Somerset's troubled waters.

One over later, James Hildreth, who became the first man to 1000 first-class runs this season in the first innings, chased a wide half-volley to hole out to the same combination for 4, and Somerset lost their third wicket in the space of five overs when Tom Cooper swung wildly to Patel at mid-on to hand a first wicket of the innings - and eighth of the match - to the debutant offspinner, Matthew Carter.

Somerset's reaction to their sudden predicament was not dissimilar to England's new-found attitude to one-day cricket. Swing hard, swing fast, and slurp up the target before before drowning in the sheer weight of runs.

Johann Myburgh proved a qualified success in this approach, thumping eight fours and a six in making 56 from 89 balls before he too fell to Carter via a brilliant, instinctive grab from Mullaney at slip after Wessels had parried the initial edge. But Tom Cooper was less successful. He completed a miserable match with a slogged duck to mid-on.

By the close, Allenby and Trego had restored their team's fragile hopes with a hard-earned 31-run stand for the sixth wicket, although Trego was lucky to receive a life on 9 when Brendan Taylor at slip missed a sharp edge off Ben Hilfenhaus.

"Once you're in it's a nice wicket to bat on but it's hard to get in at times," Maynard said. "We've had some good partnerships with the bat, which is key, we need to try and build a couple more tomorrow." Somerset's season may depend on it.