The sight of Allan Jones and Peter Hartley, the umpires, raising their fingers in sentence of Somerset batsmen represented the sign of a championship title disappearing. With Mark Chilton and Paul Horton taking Lancashire close to a target of 182, against resigned bowling, their season should end before lunch this morning.

Lancashire have been good value for a second win on the trot to secure their position in the first division in 2009. Gary Keedy took his first five-wicket haul of the season, bowling tightly and extracting slow turn with a good loop, while Oliver Newby's match figures of seven for 127 represented the best of his career.

Somerset could not make good the loss of Justin Langer and Marcus Trescothick on Thursday evening having conceded too much ground by taking a single batting point first time around. Lancashire may not have dominated the game but they have shown the character to be able to dig in at critical periods with bat or ball.

For the second time, Somerset found themselves five down with the total in double figures. Glen Chapple trapped James Hildreth on the crease and Keedy claimed the first of his wickets with genuine deception of length when Zander de Bruyn pushed forward only to find the ball graze his outside edge on its way to the wicketkeeper.

Peter Trego sought unsuccessfully to hit his way out of trouble and Ian Blackwell, having passed 1,000 runs for the season on his way to a relatively placid fifty, followed after lunch with an ugly attempt to steer the promising Newby, who has a priceless knack of taking wickets with bad balls as well as good ones.

By then a crowd of about 2,500 sensed that the game was up and cheered for their own sakes the efforts of Alfonso Thomas and Charl Willoughby, whose six disturbed the building work on flats behind the new stand. A few spectators even smiled rather than snorted when the innings ended with an attempt by Thomas to reverse-sweep Keedy.

And it was not only the beautiful freshness of a crisp autumnal day that may cause Lancashire to rue the season coming to an end. After the acrimony of Dominic Cork's departure and questions over the future of Stuart Law as captain, they are about to complete a second win in a row, comfortably, on the back of their biggest opening partnership of the campaign.

Scoreboard

Somerset: First Innings 202 (P D Trego 81; O J Newby 4 for 72)

Second Innings (overnight 66-2)
Z de Bruyn c Sutton b Keedy 33
J C Hildreth lbw b Chapple 22
I D Blackwell c Sutton b Newby 55
P D Trego c Newby b Keedy 1
C Kieswetter lbw b Newby 20
A C Thomas c Newby b Keedy 28
P S Jones c Sutton b Keedy 1
A R Caddick lbw b Keedy 7
C M Willoughby not out 6
Extras (b 16, lb 7, w 2, nb 4) 29
Total (85.1 overs) 227

Fall of wickets 1-19, 2-33, 3-78, 4-94, 5-96, 6-167, 7-186, 8-189, 9-216.

Bowling Chapple 18-5-51-2; Newby 19-6-55-3; Smith 18-5-37-0; Keedy 28.1-10-56-5; Croft 2-0-5-0.

Lancashire First Innings 248 (M B Loye 61; A R Caddick 4 for 79)

Second Innings
M J Chilton not out76
P J Horton not out43
Extras (w 1, nb 2) 3
Total (no wkt, 30 overs) 122

Bowling Willoughby 4-1-22-0; Caddick 9-3-30-0; Jones 5-0-19-0; Blackwell 9-1-39-0; Thomas 3-0-12-0.

Umpires A A Jones and P J Hartley.

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