Cricket: County Championship: Warks v Lancs

An hour before curtain up at Swan's Nest Lane, just across the Avon from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, everyone was suffering a dose of first night nerves.

The Warwickshire committee was making sure the stewards knew who was allowed backstage in the pavilion - players and committee men only - the Stratford club groundsman plus extras were touching up the backdrop for the ground's debut as a county venue, and Lancashire were still trying to get Dinesh Mongia's autograph on a registration form.

Mongia, an international artist when he played 48 one-day internationals for India but now out of the limelight with Little Stoke rep in the South Cheshire League, was called in when Lancashire added their list of injured to those away with England and found they were light of a county championship cast - especially after bad reviews following their Kent and Sussex performances.

Lancashire had a preview of what Mongia can do when they played Staffordshire in this year's C&G Trophy and well before first interval the 27-year-old was centre stage wheeling away in partnership with Lancashire's embryo left-arm star, Gary Keedy. It was not because the wicket was offering generous spin - more because Lancashire had run through their bowling resources.

Peter Martin, playing his first county match after injury, and John Wood were going for four an over until Martin was replaced by Mark Chilton and Wood handed over to Steven Crook. Last year Chilton's one first-class wicket came at an average of 109. Yet the two medium pacers applied a brake of sorts and Crook even had Mark Wagh, the day's star, dropped at first slip.

Nonetheless, with 25 overs gone Mongia started his comeback to the big time and settled into a spell of flighted spin. Before lunch he and Keedy bowled 14 tidy overs between them and Keedy trapped Nick Knight lbw for 53. But the script had many more twists and turns in store.

In the 20 overs after lunch 112 came up as Wagh and Ian Bell played to the gallery. Wagh went to his century, off 152 balls and then added another fifty in 52 balls before Bell, driving at Crook, got a thick edge to Stuart Law at point.

Their stand had put on 155 in 27 overs - 49 of them to Bell - and Wagh, whose previous century of the season was off university bowling, looked something like the budding star who had toured Australia with the England Academy.

His every move was marked by elegance. He even looked good when, on 167, he steered Crook to Law, again at point.

The Australian's catches had reduced Warwickshire from 295 for one to 304 for three. It was soon to be 313 for four when Jim Troughton missed his cue and bat-padded Keedy to Law on the stroke of tea, and 356 for five when Mongia, in his fourth spell, trapped Dougie Brown lbw.

Nonetheless, the Warwickshire bit-part batsmen, also know their lines and Jonathan Trott and Brad Hogg added fifties before the curtain fell.