Newton makes first Northants' ton

Rob Newton scored the first century of Northamptonshire's season as they had marginally the better of the first day with Warwickshire at Wantage Road. When bad light brought proceedings to a premature close, the home side had made 297 for 8, with Newton unbeaten on 108.

This represented something of a strong recovery given the fact they were 141 for 6 after less than 40 overs of play and it was mainly down to Newton and Andrew Hall's seventh wicket stand of 129 which dragged them out of the mire.

For the visitors, Jeetan Patel was the pick of the attack and at one stage he had only conceded two runs from 11 overs but despite his efforts he only managed to pick up the wicket of Ben Duckett. The other seven to fall were shared around with Chris Woakes taking 3 for 74 and Chris Wright and Rikki Clarke sharing four between them.

Having won the toss and elected to bat, Northants lost three wickets before the lunch interval as the visitors made early inroads. Stephen Peters was trapped on the crease by Woakes and James Middlebrook and Rob Keogh fell in the space of four balls to Clarke, the former caught behind and the latter comprehensively bowled.

Richard Levi, making his Championship debut for the club after being drafted in to a faltering order, and Matt Spriegel saw it through to lunch at 97 for 3 but both departed within a couple of minutes of each other early in the afternoon session. Levi recieved a decent delivery from Woakes to be caught behind and Spriegel hit across the line to Wright to be trapped in front.

Ben Duckett did not last too long as he edged Patel to Clarke at slip and the hosts were in real bother. But that brought Newton and Hall together and the pair, cautiously at first but more fluently later on, rebuilt the innings in determined fashion.

The latter survived a strong appeal for lbw from Patel early in his innings and he reached his highest score of the season when he passed 28.

Newton's half century, also his best score of the year, arrived from 96 balls and tea was reached with the score at 202 for 6.

It took the new ball to break them up as Woakes breached Hall's defences but Newton reached three figures shortly after from 164 deliveries, an innings which included 17 boundaries. Steven Crook then drove loosely to become Wright's second victim, however, Newton and Olly Stone survived until the close.