13 wickets fall at Old Trafford as Lancashire fear pitch penalty

Mike Denness, one of the England Cricket Board's Pitch Liaison Officers, watched 13 wickets go down on the opening day of Lancashire's penultimate championship match against Somerset at Old Trafford.

Denness spoke to Lancashire's head groundsman Peter Marron, umpires Bob White and Peter Willey, and the captains, Warren Hegg and Jamie Cox, and Old Trafford officials will find out today (Sat) whether he intends to report the pitch for being poor.

That could bring an eight points penalty for Lancashire, effectively wrecking their slim hopes of staying in the title race. Denness has already been involved in eight point dockings for Derbyshire and Yorkshire recently and is likely to ask another member of the Pitch Advisory Board to accompany him at Old Trafford today.

Somerset, put in by Lancashire's acting skipper Hegg, collapsed to 132 all out in 49.4 overs with Cox, who hit a superb 53, the only one to dominate the seam attack of Glen Chapple (4-34) and Mike Smethurst (3-29). But Lancashire will claim that it was good, swing bowling rather than a rogue pitch which caused the low scoring.

In contrast Somerset's seamers posed few problems for Mike Atherton and Mark Chilton as they piled on 88. But then left-arm spinner Ian Blackwell grabbed three quick wickets.

However Atherton, playing his first innings since batting for 12 hours in the Oval Test, carved out a careful half century in 175 minutes with five fours and led Lancashire to 142-3.

Two overs were lost when sun stopped play. At 5 50pm it was glaring directly into the eyes of Atherton and Graham Lloyd and they were forced to take a 10 minutes break until cloud cover arrived. It has happened before at Old Trafford where the square is laid east-west, twice in 1994 against Gloucester and Leicester and last season against Kent.