HAMPSHIRE coach Craig White believes Mason Crane put too much pressure on himself as Somerset dominated the penultimate day of their Specsavers County Championship match at Taunton.

Only two wickets fell in the 62.4 overs that were possible as Somerset progressed from 257-5 to 534-7 - a lead of 196.

Crane claimed the second when Lewis Gregory was caught by Sean Ervine at slip - but an unbroken stand of 164 in the last 32 overs between Roelof van der Merwe (91no) and Craig Overton (97no) ensured a difficult final day for Hampshire.

After Crane (30-3-130-2) recorded figures of 16-3-68-1 on day three, White said: “Our spinners didn’t bowl particularly well, we haven’t been on top of our game with the ball in this game.

“We just let the pressure off, they waited for the bad ball and unfortunately it came “Mason’s got a lot to do sees a turning pitch I think he puts too much pressure on himself - he’s expecting to take wickets every ball.

“That’s a great thing but he needs to learn to be patient and build maidens and tie batsmen down and let them make a mistake instead of trying to bowl a magic ball every ball.

“He’s still an excellent bowler with loads of potential, this is a great learning curve for him.”

Hampshire debutant David Wainwright has also struggled to make the same impact as his fellow slow left-armers in the Somerset side, taking 2-112 from his 31 overs.

“It’s hard for Wain’ to come in, he bowled well in patches but he released the odd bad ball and they didn’t need to take risks,” White told the BBC.

“Somerset’s spinners were at us all the time but we had to take big risks to get the ball away.”

White, who has been promoted from bowling coach in the wake of Dale Benkenstein’s departure, knows Hampshire face a tough final day at Taunton.

“We need to bat extremely well, someone needs to stick their hand up and get a hundred “Credit to Somerset for the way they’ve batted. They put our spinners under pressure and ended up in a fantastic situation.

“But we have to be pretty disappointed that the game has changed so much in a day.

“We have not played to the level of our last couple of matches and now we will need to bat very well on Friday, when we’ll be concentrating on trying to save this game.

“Everyone’s pretty down. We tried our best but we just weren’t as good as we’ve been in the last two games.”

Play did not begin until 1pm because of rain but Jim Allenby (56) and Gregory (61) both made half-centuries before the eighth-wicket alliance demoralised Hampshire.

Overton survived a chance to first slip off Wainwright early in his innings, but Hampshire’s spinners lacked the consistency in line and length to profit from the dry surface.

A resumption at 5.35pm saw Overton smash Will Smith’s off-spin for 4,4,6,6.

He is on the cusp of a maiden first-class century after he and Van der Merwe broke a 120 year-old record for Somerset’s eighth wicket against Hampshire - the 131 set in 1896.