Glamorgan require a further 215 runs at Cardiff

Glamorgan will enter the final day of their Championship match against Northants at Cardiff needing a further 215 runs with 6 wickets in hand to win their final home game of the season and maintain their bid for promotion into Division One.

The visitors set the Welsh county a target of 382 after having been dismissed for 265 in their second innings, with Robert Croft taking 5/93 to record a ten wicket haul in the contest, and a match analysis of 10/147 - his best return for 11 years.

Resuming on 80/2, Northamptonshire lost David Sales and Mark Powell in the first half hour as Glamorgan`s seamers struck in their opening spell. As in their first innings, Mike Hussey remained defiant at the other end, but shortly after, he had reached his half-century, the introduction of Robert Croft accounted for the visiting captain as he was caught by Matthew Maynard for 50.

This brought an abrupt end to Hussey`s productive sequence that had seen him record five successive first-class hundreds - only Don Bradman, C.B. Fry and Mike Procter have scored six in a row.

Despite some resistance from Jeff Cook and Graeme Swann, Croft proceeded to work his way through the middle and lower order, reducing Northants to 207/9, before a merry tenth wicket stand between Andre Nel and Jason Brown thwarted Glamorgan`s aspirations.

The pair had added 58 before Nel was caught by Michael Kasprowicz to give Croft his fifth victim, but their lusty blows meant that Glamorgan required a formidable target of 382 on a wicket giving some help to the spinners, and more than they had ever scored in the fourth innings of a Championship match to win the game (367-4 v Essex at Chemsford in 2001).

However, Jimmy Maher and Mark Wallace made a positive start, adding 63 runs in even time, until in the final over before tea, Maher went down the wicket to Brown and was stumped. Wallace was run out soon afterwards, and then Adrian Dale was dismissed by Graeme Swann to leave Glamorgan 91/3.

Matthew Maynard, drawing on all of his experience, stoutly defended against the Northants spinners, but in the final half-hour he lost Mike Powell as Glamorgan ended the day on 167/4, with Maynard unbeaten on 46.