Northamptonshire edged day one of their Specsavers County Championship contest against Durham, taking a 60-run lead into day two at Emirates Riverside.

Luke Procter starred with the ball for the visitors, claiming 5-33 to put his side in command. Ben Sanderson and Brett Hutton were also on point to bowl Durham out for 129.

In response Northants battled their way beyond the home side's first-innings total. Captain Alex Wakely was dropped twice early in his knock and he made the home side pay, scoring a brisk half-century, while Adam Rossington notched 47 to leave them on top.

The toss was uncontested as the visitors opted to send Durham into bat.

Their decision proved correct as Sanderson made immediate inroads to send Cameron Steel and Gareth Harte back to the pavilion. Hutton produced an accurate spell of bowling to keep the pressure on and was rewarded when he pinned Graham Clark lbw for three.

Alex Lees attempted to combat the moving ball with an aggressive approach after seeing off Sanderson and Hutton. However, a straight delivery from Procter halted his innings at 25. Axar Patel scored 95 on his Durham debut, but there was to be no repeat performance as he was bowled by Procter. Richardson continued the procession edging a Sanderson delivery on to his own stumps.

Paul Collingwood and Stuart Poynter offered resistance, but that came to an end when the Durham skipper was out on the stroke of lunch to Procter. The tail was wrapped up fairly quickly by Procter and Sanderson after the interval, with Poynter falling for 28 as the home side crumbled to 129 all out inside 40 overs.

Northamptonshire made a steady start as Procter opened with Ben Curran. The all-rounder made 21 before Matt Salisbury pinned him lbw, while Curran lofted a shot straight to Steel at mid-wicket off Rushworth. The dismissal of Curran brought Wakely to the crease. He edged his first ball to Michael Richardson at third slip, but he failed to take the catch. The second ball was almost identical, although this time Lees dropped the chance in the slip cordon.

Although Salisbury notched the scalp of Ricardo Vasconcelos and Richard Levi played a poor shot to lose his wicket, Wakely used his fortune to take the attack to the home side.

He crashed 10 boundaries to put Northants ahead of Durham's first-innings score, reaching his 50 off 70 deliveries in the process. Patel produced a good delivery to remove the visitors' skipper for 60, but Rossington kept Northants on course for a significant first-innings lead, despite the late wicket of Saif Zaib.

Salisbury admitted: "It was nice to get a wicket right at the end. It makes it that bit easier in the morning for the bowlers to come in. Hopefully we can finish off the innings as quickly as we can without as much damage and we can try to get past them

"When you're up here and there's been a bit of rain about you know it's going to do a bit. Generally opposition teams tend to bowl here first. We knew that it was going to be very tough to get through the first spells and then it might flatten out late in the game, but it was always going to be a tough one for us.

"I was pretty pleased with the way I bowled. It was nice to get a few wickets, there was a frustrating period in the middle when they started to get a few boundaries. It just started to get away from us a little bit, but I think we dragged it back towards the end. It's a very similar situation to where we were against Derbyshire. We got bowled out for under 100 and they had a 100-run lead in that game. We got past them then we bowled them out, so we're never out of the game."