Australian seamer Nathan McAndrew took his first Warwickshire wickets to restrict Lancashire’s first-innings lead to a modest 46 on the third day of the County Championship match at Emirates Old Trafford, but a draw still appears the most likely outcome to the game.

When bad light ended play after just three overs of Warwickshire’s second innings, the visitors were four without loss, with Alex Davies having avoided a pair on his return to Old Trafford.

But the long drama of Lancashire losing their last nine wickets for 120 had appeared anything but likely during a morning session in which the only wicket to fall was that of Luke Wells, who had made 80 when he seemed to drive the ball firmly into the ground on its way back to Danny Briggs.

However, the bowler took the two-handed catch with little fuss and was immediately congratulated by his colleagues. To the opener’s apparent bemusement, the umpires upheld the appeal after a brief consultation, thus ending Wells’ 166-run opening stand with Jennings.

Jennings and Josh Bohannon took the total at lunch to 222 without further loss and the opener reached his century 10 balls after the resumption when he cover drove Briggs to the boundary to reach three figures in successive County Championship innings.

The important qualification to that achievement, however, was that this is Jennings’ first red-ball match since he made 127 in the Roses match at Headingley last July. A torn left calf ruled him out of the final two months of last season and a similar injury to his right leg has kept him on the sidelines for the first few weeks of this campaign.

Undaunted by a score of 241 for one, though, Warwickshire’s faster bowlers hit back with the new ball in the first hour of afternoon session by taking three wickets for 15 runs in six overs.

All three batsmen fell to catches in the slip cordon. Olly Hannon-Dalby produced a fine ball to have Bohannon taken by Rob Yates at first slip; Craig Miles dismissed Steven Croft for a duck, well caught by Chris Benjamin in the region of fifth slip, and Jennings’ half-hearted push at a delivery from Hannon-Dalby only diverted the ball to Sam Hain at second slip.

Phil Salt included four boundaries in a typically breezy 26 off 36 balls but he was then caught at mid-off by Will Rhodes off McAndrew, thus giving the Warwickshire bowler his first Warwickshire victim.

In the second over after the resumption McAndrew extracted much more lift than George Balderson was expecting and the all-rounder gloved a looping catch to Hain at slip. Luke Wood lasted only four balls before edging Briggs to Rhodes, also at slip, and six deliveries later Vilas departed for 41 when an attempted cut off McAndrew merely feathered a catch to Michael Burgess behind the stumps.

McAndrew also took the wicket of Hassan Ali for four but Matt Parkinson and Tom Bailey then put on 26 for the last wicket before Parkinson was leg before wicket to Hannon-Dalby for nine, thus giving the Warwickshire spearhead the excellent figures of 3-33 from 24.3 overs.

Report supplied by the ECB Reporters’ Network.