Gloucestershire seamer Matt Taylor bowled his side back into contention as the wickets tumbled on day two of a fast-moving County Championship contest against Northamptonshire at Bristol.<\/p>\n
Replying to the home side’s first-innings 154, Northants were shot out for 127 inside 52 overs, Taylor returning figures of 5-36 with fellow seamer Craig Miles taking 3-22 on a day when 57.4 overs were lost to rain and bad light. <\/p>\n
Captain Luke Procter top-scored with 38 for the visitors, who suffered a startling collapse in the final session, their last six wickets falling for 42 runs on a hybrid surface still offering plenty of assistance to the bowlers.<\/p>\n
There was no let-up in the chaos when Gloucestershire recommenced their second innings in the early-evening gloom.<\/p>\n
Harry Conway removed nightwatchman Will Williams and top order batter Ben Charlesworth with successive deliveries and Ben Sanderson sent back a second nightwatchman, Miles, as the home side reached stumps on 21-3.<\/p>\n
Skipper Cameron Bancroft and Ollie Price prevented further loss and Gloucestershire, who lead by 48, will be hoping an improved weather forecast materialises when they resume in the morning.<\/p>\n
Attempting to win a four-day game in Bristol for the first time since 2013, Northants had resumed on 37-3 and were immediately under pressure as Gloucestershire’s seamers exploited a two-paced hybrid pitch and cloudy overhead conditions. <\/p>\n
Left-armer Taylor struck an early blow, angling a delivery into leg stump and removing Nathan McSweeney lbw for six with the score 39-4 as batting continued to prove a hazardous business.<\/p>\n
Procter and Saif Zaib were spared the test when a band of rain moved in soon afterwards, forcing the players off for an hour and causing 16 overs to be lost. <\/p>\n
When play resumed beneath lighter skies, the fifth-wicket pair displayed commendable patience and discipline, eschewing risk in favour of waiting for the bad ball under the Bristol floodlights.<\/p>\n
They doubled the score to calm Northants nerves, reaching the lunch interval on 83-4. But with more rain disrupting play in the middle session 41 overs had been lost by the time play resumed at 17:00 BST.<\/p>\n
Gloucestershire immediately assumed the upper hand, Miles claiming three wickets in 14 balls from the Ashley Down Road end to fundamentally alter the balance of power. <\/p>\n
Having served up dogged defiance for 104 balls, Procter suffered an uncharacteristic rush of blood to the head, pulling a Miles bumper high to Taylor at deep square.<\/p>\n
Dropped by Bancroft at second slip off the bowling of Williams on 19 in the previous over, Zaib was not so fortunate when he inexplicably took on another short-pitched delivery from Miles and top-edged to long leg.<\/p>\n
Miles was to make further inroads, too, having George Bartlett caught behind down the leg side.<\/p>\n
When he was replaced by Taylor, the latter then accounted for Lewis McManus and Sanderson with successive deliveries in the 46th over. McManus aimed a big drive at a Taylor in-swinger and was comprehensively bowled, while Sanderson chipped to mid-off as Northants slumped to 106-9. <\/p>\n
James Sales and Liam Guthrie added 21 for the last wicket before the latter holed out to mid-wicket as Taylor completed his second five-wicket haul of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gloucestershire seamer Matt Taylor bowled his side back into contention as the wickets tumbled on day two of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":965600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-965599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116587215267905691","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/965600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}