7 to win for Lancs

Be remiss of me at this point not to congratulate Sideshow Bob on his 500th career first class wicket yesterday. Nice for it to be someone of the calibre of Trescothick too, although a shame he couldn't have got him 180 runs earlier.

It is due a remarkable collapse....27 points clear!

What worries me is there is 10 games still to go, which is plenty of time for it to go horribly wrong and get us relegated, which would be par for the course.

It's Lancs or Durham to win it for me now, with Somerset as outsiders if (with a stronger side on paper) they can get on a roll after a slow start as they did last year.

Lancs have done well to get wins & points on the board while the games are coming thick and fast and the weather has been dry. Last year I think Notts won their first four games, then won only four of the remaining twelve, losing (I think) five, but it was good enough to make them champions. At some stage the chasing pack will be hampered by adverse weather.

Durham had rotten luck with injuries last year, particularly to their fast bowlers, but they seem to have a good all round squad with the right blend of youth and experience.

Most teams will beat Worcs twice, so someone will probably go down with a relatively high number of wins/points. Hants always look like relegation fodder at this time of year, then seem to have a strong second half of the season. I wouldn't be surprised if Notts repeat their their feat of a few years ago, going down the year after winning the championship.

Unless we have a really dry summer, the pitches start turning square and they can bring in either Wainwright or Rafiq as a second spinner, don't count Yorkshire out of that relegation battle.

The seam bowling support to Sidebottom is truly pop-gun stuff with Bresnan out, and with a pretty young top order we're not going to bat sides out of the game.

Another shambolic 4th innings effort from Yorkshire, it's a worrying trend.

I was looking into that this morning. Going off previous seasons we're around 40 points from safety. I'll breathe a huge sigh of relief when we tick them off!

You'll struggle not to get a minimum 40 points from ten matches. Even Worcs have 28 from six defeats out of six!

There are easily two sides worse than us. Worcs for one *cough* Adrian Shankar *cough cough*

Dogged batting display from Lancs, after a ropey start.....Durham won the toss which suggests that it might be bowler friendly, so it will be interesting how Durham fare tomorrow.

This match will be a massive indicator of Lancs' title aspirations....Just hope they avoid a heavy defeat, which could fracture the confidence that they have built up recently.....From today's performance, it at least looks like they have the stomach for a scrap.

Yorkshire look set for another humping.

313 in a day should be enough to get the draw, at least. To get to a winning position Durham need a good 550, which will use up the best part of 2 days.

As you say though, at 215/6 it looked like a rather low score was on, and in trouble, but showing that sort of fight to get to a respectable score bodes well.

Plenty of rain forecast for early today so I can't see them racking up a massive score, well, not today anyway!
Good recovery from being 9-2 early on. Just a shame we lost the last 3 wickets for 1 run.
New ball is crucial whenever we start. I'm just a little worried about their middle order as they have all been in the runs this season so far. Be a nice time for them to all fail though

Been poor for Kent but we have picked up in our current match

Not looking good for Lancs-still over 200 runs behind with only 7 wickets left.