County Championship Division One - day one (close)

Somerset 192 v Lancashire 99 & 7-2

SOMERSET head coach Jason Kerr insists he is "not worried" about the club receiving punishment over their pitch, insisting it was "poor cricket" rather than the surface which lead to 22 wickets falling on the first day of the County Championship clash against Lancashire in Taunton.

The visitors ended the day trailing by 86 runs with eight second innings wickets remaining, Jack Leach picking up two breakthroughs before the close to add to his 5-28 in the first innings, but Kerr was keen to allay fears that the pitch was to blame.

He said: "I'm not worried at all [about sanctions].

"I think it was a good cricket wicket. You would look at it from afar, see that Jack Leach got 5-28 this morning and make assumptions, but if you look at the manner of his dismissals they are different to what we are used to. He would also be the first to admit he was not at his best this morning.

"There was some poor cricket played which you cannot put down to the surface.

"Lancashire will be disgruntled but we have seen wickets improve as matches have gone on here this season so we will see what happens tomorrow.

"It's not a poor surface if your 10th-wicket pair are adding 55, as ours did. They showed that if you apply yourselves, and are aggresive at the right time, there are runs to be scored.

Lewis Gregory, who was part of that last-wicket stand and scored 64 to continue his rich vein of form, said: "It's not a bad surface. We have played on worse in recent years.

"There is spin there but our lower order showed it is possible to score on it.

"I went out there with a positive mindset wanting to put the bowlers under pressure. It's nice to be contributing so consistently at the moment, especially today when the team really needed it."

Gregory claimed the first of the 22 wickets to fall but, as if to show that poor shots were as responsible as the surface, it came from a long hop which Karl Brown pulled straight to debutant Ben Green at mid-wicket.

Leach then had Steven Croft stumped before Alex Davies lofted a full toss to mid-on for what turned out to be an innings top score of 20.

By lunch it was 72-5, and the visitors subsided to 99 all out as Jamie Overton (3-32) and Leach ran riot.

Somerset's response was far from smooth and the hosts were quickly 19-3 themselves, Green bowled for a single on his First Class bow either side of similar dismissals for Marcus Trescothick (9) and Azhar Ali (1).

James Hildreth played some typically attractive shots in his 32, but the game was back on a knife edge when Somerset slipped to 104-8.

Gregory then came to the fore, joining forces first with Jamie Overton - who cleared the ropes twice in his 24 - and then Leach, who dug in for his 17 before he was the last man out, leaving Gregory stranded on 64 not out.

Leach then opened the bowling and removed Davies for the second time in the day before nightwatchman Matt Parkinson edged to Gregory at slip as Lancashire reached the close on 7-2.

Kerr was disappointed his side didn't hammer home their advantage with the bat, saying: "We had an opportunity to bat big and we didn't do that.

"Sometimes patterns are created and the way they batted perhaps put doubts in the mind of some of our batsmen - there were some soft dismissals in our innings."

Somerset's pitch for last season's concluding match against Middlesex was marked "below average", and another such rating in this match would bring a penalty.