LANCASHIRE’S bid to seal an early return to the top tier of the LV= County Championship remains firmly on course after a hard-fought third day against promotion rivals Glamorgan at Colwyn Bay.

A win in North Wales, their seventh from 12, will not quite seal the deal for the Division Two leaders with a quarter of the season still to play, but it will be just about job done.

They came into this fixture 47 points clear of third-placed Glamorgan, who are likely to take only three points from a match which has seen them follow-on in reply to 698-5 declared.

Should Lancashire claim five more wickets to win tomorrow, they will go 68 clear of Glamorgan, who have a game in hand. It is difficult to see how they cannot finish inside the top two come the end of September.

Lancashire were made to work hard for their wickets in what continues to be good batting conditions as Glamorgan reached 146-5 from 49 second-innings overs at close, a deficit of 204.

The hosts advanced their first innings from 165-6 overnight to 348 inside the early stages of the afternoon, with 10th-wicket pair Dean Cosker and Michael Hogan sharing 75 – the best stand of the innings.

Hogan even hit a career best 57, but he was one of three wickets to Arron Lilley’s off-spin.

The pick of the Lancashire bowlers, however, was 41-year-old seamer Glen Chapple, who only took one of the four first-innings wickets to fall as he finished with 4-62.

Glamorgan’s last three wickets put on 175, and Lilley was expensive in conceding 113 runs in 20.2 overs. Thankfully, with nearly 700 on the board, preventing the runs is off little concern to the Red Rose.

Glamorgan slipped to 33-2 inside 11 overs of the second innings thanks to two wickets for Kyle Jarvis, who had Jacques Rudolph caught at second slip and Will Bragg brilliantly caught behind one-handed by Alex Davies off an inside edge.

After tea, first-innings double centurion Alviro Petersen was back in the action, taking a one-handed stunner above his head at long-on to help Simon Kerrigan get rid of Colin Ingram with 57 on the board.

And Lilley then had David Lloyd, who shared 52 with unbeaten Chris Cooke for the fourth wicket, lbw before Kerrigan bowled Mark Wallace, leaving the score at 120-5 in the 41st.