A career-best five for 67 from Darren Maddy has given Leicestershire a good chance of victory over bottom-of-the-table Northants in their CricInfo Championship clash at Grace Road.

Maddy, usually an opening batsman but being converted into a middle-order all-rounder this season, had never taken more than three wickets in an innings before.

But on a day much more favourable to the batsmen, he emerged as Leicestershire's star turn with his brisk medium pace outswing bringing him the wickets of Michael Hussey, Mal Loye, Graeme Swann, Kevin Innes and Lesroy Weekes as Northants were bowled out for 257.

That left Leicestershire a victory target of 232 and they had knocked off five of the runs when bad light ended play for the day 25 minutes early.

It was certainly a much more serene day's play than on Wednesday when 20 wickets fell for 344 runs and brought pitch liaison officer Tony Brown to assess the situation.

He had left by lunchtime perfectly satisfied that there was nothing untoward about the pitch itself as Northants cruised to 79 without loss in 27 overs.

Hussey and Loye appeared to be in little trouble until Maddy came into the attack and removed them both in the space of eight balls. He clean bowled Hussey with a delivery which swung late and then had Hussey caught behind off a thin edge.

A half-century from Russell Warren – only the second of the match – regained the initiative for the visitors, but he was dismissed in the last over before tea by Phil DeFreitas.

That was a vital breakthrough for Leicestershire, and when DeFreitas struck again immediately after the interval by trapping David Ripley lbw they had their tails up. Maddy snapped up Innes and Weekes and Devon Malcolm claimed last man Jason Brown to put the home side in a winning position.

Malcolm finished with three for 46 to bring his total of Championship wickets this season to 26 and Maddy had match figures of eight for 95.

© CricInfo Ltd.