Specsavers County Championship
Division 1 - Day 4

Somerset 399 & 339-7 dec beat Yorkshire 320 & 194 by 224 runs

SOMERSET remain in the hunt for a first County Championship title after beating Yorkshire by 224 runs at Headingley to stay on Surrey's heels.

Tom Abell’s side wrapped up their third straight win shortly after tea, with 26.3 overs remaining, to leave the gap between the top two at 32 points with four left to play, including a meeting between the two in Taunton in the penultimate week of the season.

Relegation-threatened Yorkshire started day four on 8-2, chasing an improbable target of 419, with Lewis Gregory having removed openers Harry Brook and Adam Lyth late on day three.

Gregory continued his sensational recent form by breaking a third-wicket stand of 90 between nightwatchman Josh Shaw and New Zealand captain Kane Williamson just before lunch.

The all-rounder collected his third wicket when Shaw shuffled across and was trapped lbw for a career-best 42, leaving the hosts on 94-3.

Gregory finished the game with two half-centuries and six wickets, including four in the second innings.

For Yorkshire, that was the first of three wickets to fall for nine runs in seven overs either side of lunch, as the score fell to 103-6.

Williamson reached 50 off 105 balls midway through the opening over of the afternoon before falling two balls later, caught behind off Craig Overton.

Overton (2-45) then trapped Tom Kohler-Cadmore lbw for a duck in his next over, before twin brother Jamie Overton flicked Gary Ballance’s off stump three balls later.

Jamie Overton struck again to send Jack Leaning’s off-stump cartwheeling, and that was 124-7.

Gregory’s (4-33) fourth wicket of the innings came when Andrew Hodd lost his off-stump, but from 143-8, home captain David Willey and Matthew Fisher held things up with a 45-run stand in 19 overs either side of tea.

But the latter fell to Jamie Overton, caught at third slip by Gregory, at 188-9 with a little over 28 overs remaining.

Overton wrapped up the game by having Jack Brooks caught by Marcus Trescothick at second slip to finish with an excellent 4-25.

Somerset take 23 points from this fixture to Yorkshire’s six.

Up next for Somerset is a home match with Lancashire, starting this Tuesday, September 4.

***

JAMIE Overton said afterwards: "The pitch was pretty slow, and we had to keep going.

"Kane [Williamson] and Josh Shaw played well for the first session, but we managed to get Josh out right at the end of it, which gave us a push going into lunch.

"We found it quite tough this morning.

"My role naturally is to be quite aggressive, but today was about making them play as much as possible.

"It was mainly to try and hit the stumps as much as I could; there was a bit of reverse, which was nice to have.

"Craig's ball to get Kane bounced a bit and showed the inconsistency in the pitch.

"Fortunately he got one to pop and caught the glove.

"This was a very good performance.

"There were a couple of individual performances which stood out - Josh [Davey] with his five-fer, and Abes [Tom Abell] with his hundred.

"But it was very much a team performance."