JOHN Crawley made a timely return to form but Lancashire still faced a tough battle to save their Championship game against Somerset in Taunton today.

Crawley, with a miserable 140 runs from 10 Championship innings this season, cruised to his first half century of the summer in an opening stand of 124 with Mike Atherton.

But the loss of Atherton and Neil Fairbrother in the space of five overs left Lancashire on 133 for two, still needing another 193 to avoid an innings defeat after Somerset piled up their highest ever score against Lancashire yesterday.

Earlier Lancashire had been made to toil in the field on a bitterly cold July day as Turner and Michael Burns put on 176, a record for Somerset's seventh wicket against Lancashire.

Joe Scuderi could not add to the four wickets he picked up on Thursday but still ended with highly creditable figures of four for 58 from 27 overs, and Chris Schofield finished well with the last three wickets of the innings.

Somerset's total of 565 still beat their previous best against Lancashire of 561 set at Bath 99 years ago.