Northants eye off return to top spot

On an otherwise quiet day in the County Championship, Northamptonshire spinners Jason Brown and Graeme Swann have again spoken loudly to have their county well positioned for a home victory over Worcestershire at Wantage Road.

In the knowledge that a victory in this clash will have his team back on top of the Division Two standings, Brown (5/100) was in irresistible form with his gentle off spin early in the day, reducing his opponents to a score of 249 - and a massive first innings deficit of 270 - around some brave batting from David Leatherdale (132).

To compound the visitors' woes, Swann (4/25) then chimed in with some fine finger spinning of his own as his opponents followed on. He removed Graeme Hick (46), Philip Weston (40) and Vikram Solanki (0) in the space of four overs at one point as Worcestershire collapsed to a second innings score of 102/6 and headlong toward a crushing defeat in the process. Hick and Weston had looked to be mounting an admirably resilient act of recovery for their team as they edged the score to 83/1 but the disastrous Swann-initiated collapse of 15/5 that they suffered in the closing stages of the day now gives the result - barring poor weather tomorrow - a certain look of inevitability about it.

In the only other Championship match still being played today, Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire shared the honours at Trent Bridge.

A rather tame finish was always on the cards once Paul Reiffel (60*) and Chris Read (45) had defied the pace of Ed Giddins (4/70) to lift the locals from their overnight score of 85/5 to the mark of 232/8 at which they eventually declared their second innings closed.

This left Warwickshire needing the small matter of 277 to win from a minimum of forty-nine overs and, given the almost insurmountable odds, it was a challenge to which it predictably chose not to respond. Play was called off half an hour early by the mutual consent of the captains with the score at 132/4. Nick Knight (37) played a sound innings and then Trevor Penney (38no) and Dougie Brown (19*) shared in an unbroken stand of forty-nine runs for the fifth wicket before the match was brought to its end.