Sri Lankan star puts Red Rose in driving seat

The Sri Lankan chipped out the first three Leicestershire batsmen to boost Red Rose hopes of a second consecutive Championship victory.

And now he will be looking to return to his 1999 form, when he collected 66 wickets from six matches, in his three remaining Championship games before he is called away on international duty.

Murali relished bowling on another superb Old Trafford pitch, finding turn and bounce to bowl Trevor Ward, then trap Iain Sutcliffe and Ben Smith lbw.

Peter Martin then produced a terrific spell of 12-4-22-3 from the Warwick Road End, having Leicester's Aussie dangerman Daniel Marsh caught at cover and following up with the wickets of Vince Wells and Neil Burns.

But Jon Dakin, who had earlier taken four of the last five Lancashire wickets which fell for only 28, then joined the determined Darren Maddy to set up a tense final day.

Lancashire still started as favourites with Leicestershire effectively 118 for six.

But they were desperate to avoid a repeat of the counties' last meeting, in Leicester last month, when they fell six runs short of a modest victory target of 211.

Lancashire blew a chance to bat the visitors out of the game yesterday, despite the 44th century of Neil Fairbrother's Lancashire career.

The 37-year-old is now only two behind Jack Iddon, who is sixth in Lancashire's all-time list of century-makers with 46. CHRIS SCHOFIELD and John Wood return to the Lancashire side for tomorrow's National League game against Middlesex at Old Trafford.

Schofield comes in for Gary Keedy, who replaced him in the Championship game against Leicestershire, while Wood takes over from Joe Scuderi.

Both Schofield and Wood played in the Lancashire second team who went down to a crushing defeat by Yorkshire at Liverpool yesterday, after being wrecked by left arm paceman Paul Hutchison in their second innings.

Lancs: Atherton, Chilton, Crawley, Fairbrother, Flintoff, Hegg, Schofield, Chapple, Martin, Wood, Muralitharan.