CHARLIE Shreck took season's best figures to leave Essex struggling in humid conditions on the first day of the Specsavers County Championship Division Two game at Chelmsford.

The 38-year-old Leicestershire seamer had taken four for 79 before play was curtailed early because of bad light as Essex closed on 266 for nine.

Shreck took the key wicket of Tom Westley straight after lunch for 57, adding Dan Lawrence caught on the boundary shortly afterwards. When he later switched ends, he had James Foster and Matt Quinn both caught behind in the space of 14 balls.

Clint McKay grabbed three of the other five wickets to fall to take his season's championship tally to 26.

Essex are heading towards a sub-300 first-innings total for the first time this season. The Division Two leaders looked set fair for a sizeable total when Westley and Ravi Bopara put on 76 runs for the third wicket.

Bopara batted relatively cautiously for 57 overs before falling just before tea to the part-time bowling of Leicestershire captain Mark Cosgrove for 61 from 168 balls. Thereafter wickets fell at regular intervals as Essex limped to a solitary bonus point before the premature close.

Essex had been in trouble from the start, McKay sending back Essex openers Jaik Mickleburgh and Nick Browne inside the first seven overs. Mickleburgh went in the first over, the ball coming back and dislodging his off-stump. Browne followed, lbw for seven.

But Westley and Bopara steadied the ship, staying together for 31.3 overs before Westley exited to Shreck's third ball after lunch.

Westley had hit his ninth four of a 94-ball 57 straight after the break. It was a forceful innings with the majority of his boundaries coming in the arc between mid-on and mid-off, the others hit crisply through the covers.

But he shouldered arms to a wide-ish delivery from Shreck, the ball hitting the back of his bat and diverting on to his stumps.

Lawrence replaced him, hammering Shreck for successive boundaries square to both sides of the wicket, and driving McKay for a scrumptious off-drive, before hooking Shreck to the well-baited trap at long-leg where Rob Taylor was waiting.

McKay picked up his third wicket when Jesse Ryder played on for 18.

Bopara's innings was built on watchfulness, and he did not collect his second boundary, a punch through the covers, until the 90th ball faced.

His demise, 78 balls after that, was a collector's item. Cosgrove had only bowled one other over in the championship this season, but with his third ball he had Bopara dragging on to one of his very occasional seamers.

Ryan ten Doeschate found gaps in the field, hitting Taylor for two fours in a row, before he was caught at the wicket flashing at Neil Dexter for 42 from 48 balls.

Wicketkeeper Ned Eckersley took two more catches to make it three in five and a half overs, providing Shreck with his third and fourth wickets, pouching Foster and Quinn.

With the light deteriorating, the umpires took the players off 12.2 overs early, with the last-wicket pair of David Masters and Jamie Porter facing the second new ball.