Lancashire 96 for 4 v Essex
Scorecard

As the clans gathered at Cardiff and Yorkshire ran through Warwickshire quicker than stomach trouble on a campsite, one did not have to be a cricketing paranoid to think that the main action was taking place many miles away from Emirates Old Trafford this damp Monday.

The only optimistic note of the grey afternoon was struck when it was reported that Tom Smith 's back operation had been a success. Smith was appointed Lancashire captain in February but has been able to lead his team in just one championship game this season.

Yet the 25.4 overs that were possible on the first day of Lancashire's Division Two match against Essex were important to players in both teams. By common agreement Lancashire produced their worst championship cricket of the season in last week's grimy draw against Northamptonshire. Glamorgan, third, may trail by 50 points but they have a couple of games in hand and still have to play Lancashire twice. Ashley Giles will be on the lookout for the least speck of complacency among his players.

And as Glamorgan fought their own battle against the weather in the urban pastoral of Queen's Park, Chesterfield, they may have been heartened to hear of Lancashire's struggle to a very moderate 96 for 4 against Essex on a day when James Porter added Paul Horton and Karl Brown to the 15 opening batsmen he had already sent packing this season.

Porter bowls with a commendably high action and he is not scared to pitch the ball up. Those qualities may have led to him being milked for a few boundaries as the openers added 48 in 8.2 overs on the first morning but they also helped him achieve his successes.

The first of these came when Horton pushed forward at a ball which moved enough off the seam to catch the outside edge and fly to the safe hands of Jesse Ryder at first slip; the second arrived just two balls later as Porter's bounce surprised Karl Brown with the resulting nick being safely cupped by second slip Liam Dawson.

If that catch helped Dawson feel that he belonged in the first game of his one-month loan from Hampshire, what happened over the next 15 overs may have turned him into an adopted son of Southend. Summoned into the attack by James Foster in the 16th over of Lancashire's innings, the slow left-armer's third ball had Alviro Petersen leg before for 14 when he played back to a delivery to which he might have gone forward.

Having lunched on a moderate 92 for 3, the home side's innings trespassed into outright mediocrity when Ashwell Prince tried to pull the first ball of the afternoon session to the boundary but only bottom-edged it onto his stumps. That gave Dawson his second wicket of a day which was soon to be cut short by the weather. A typically pugnacious clout over mid-on by the new batsman, Alex Davies, was the last scoring shot before a shower sent the players back to the pavilion just before two o'clock.