County Championship: Peter Trego keeps Somerset on top against Warwickshire

Peter Trego was to follow up his removal of Ian Bell with his second 50 of the match

Somerset look in the best shape to win at Edgbaston after a bowler-dominated second day against Warwickshire in which 18 wickets fell.

Resuming on 27-2, the Bears looked likely to follow on when injured skipper Ian Bell's departure left them 88-6.

They recovered to post 152, thanks to Varun Chopra's 56, then fought back.

They bowled Somerset out for 178 - of which Peter Trego made 51 - and closed on 4-0 in pursuit of 322 to win.

Trego's second half-century of the match, following his first-innings 94, may yet prove decisive, despite Boyd Rankin's 3-33 and Chris Woakes' 3-45.

A first-innings lead of 143 was a significant advantage on a pitch which has offered bowlers more assistance than envisaged.

Lewis Gregory and Jamie Overton each took three wickets for Somerset, but Craig Overton finished off the innings after Warwickshire's last pair Woakes and Jeetan Patel had added 17 to see their side past the follow-on target.

With both sides looking for their first win of the season, Warwickshire will have to make the highest score of the match to do it - and the balance is tilted even further in the visitors' favour by the continued worry over Bell, who is nursing an injured hamstring.

Having not come in until number seven in the first innings because of the time he had spent off the field the previous day, Bell lasted only 12 balls before holing out off Trego for seven.

Bell, hoping for an England recall against Sri Lanka for the first Test at Headingley in 10 days' time, went off at the end of the day's play for a scan, but is expected to be able to bat.

Warwickshire bowler Boyd Rankin told BBC WM:

"We will try and bat really positively. We still think we can win. In general, it is a pretty good wicket. There are a few cracks there in the pitch but we have just got to be positive.

"I would say that the reason so many wickets have fallen is down more to batsman error than top-quality bowling.

"Looking back on our innings there were quite a few soft wickets and I suppose the same with them.

"The wickets here seem to get a bit flatter so our ploy was to bowl a little bit short. There were one of two them not too keen on the short ball so it was something we felt would work well on that wicket."

Somerset all-rounder Peter Trego told BBC Somerset:

"Tom Abell played magnificently well on day one, supported up the other end by myself, but we played and missed at a lot of balls that we could easily have nicked. The general feeling was that you could easily be rolled for 150 and that played out in Warwickshire's innings.

"We have got ourselves into a great position now and it's about staying disciplined and pretty much replicating what we did in their first innings.

"The pitch has some quite decent-sized cracks so, when the ball is in and around that area, there is a little bit of uneven bounce and sideways movement. Because of the nature of what happens when the ball does hit a crack, it is just unsettling the batsmen.

"We've seen a couple of guys get hit on the gloves and body from relatively full deliveries and that sets the batsmen on the back-foot a little bit so they are not as forward as they should be sometimes.

"It just creates a little bit of doubt and if we keep bashing away at a decent speed, 80-85mph like most of our bowlers are, I'm sure we will get the rewards."