MATT Renshaw eased Somerset’s batting worries with a fluent century on the opening day of the LV=County Championship match with Warwickshire at Taunton.

The Australian Test player’s superb 129, featuring 19 fours and 2 sixes, paved the way for an imposing score of 351 for four. It was his fourth hundred in six home Championship appearances for Somerset – four of those games back in 2018.

With a short boundary on the town side of the Cooper Associates County Ground and a pitch showing only a tinge of green, Somerset appeared to have given their under-pressure batting unit every opportunity to find some form.

Renshaw and Lammonby played positively from the start, only Hannon-Dalby showing the necessary accuracy to contain them.

The two left-handers brought up a half-century stand in the 15th over and began to accelerate, Lammonby surviving a tough chance to gully on 28 off Craig Miles.

Renshaw looked an even more complete player than in his first successful spell with Somerset and moved to fifty off 80 balls, with 8 fours and a pulled six off Miles.

 

Lammonby had gone to his half-century off 76 balls, with a crisp on-driven four off Aussie seamer Nathan McAndrew, who was proving expensive on his Warwickshire debut.

But Hannon-Dalby had given little away and the tall seamer made the breakthrough in the fifth over after lunch as Lammonby edged a defensive shot to Sam Hain at second slip.

Abell and Renshaw confidently built on what had gone before, the latter reaching a chanceless hundred off 158 balls.

The shot that brought up Renshaw’s ton was among his best, a flowing back-foot forcing stroke through the off-side for a boundary off McAndrew.

Abell had moved to a composed 92-ball fifty. The final session saw him joined by Tom Banton, who helped take the total to 277 before Abell was caught behind down the leg side pushing forward to occasional off-spinner Rob Yates.

James Hildreth was caught at point for 23, cutting a wide ball from Hannon-Dalby. But Somerset, without Peter Siddle because of a stomach strain, could still reflect on four hugely welcome batting points.