Morning and afternoon rain plus bad light in the evening trimmed 51.4 overs off the second day's play in Lancashire's LV= County Championship match against Essex.

Steven Croft's batsmen still made solid progress towards a good haul of batting bonus points at Emirates Old Trafford.

The home side finished on 257 for five with Croft leading the way with 85 not out off 192 balls.

Lancashire stand-in skipper added 79 with Alex Davies for the fifth wicket and an unbroken 86 with James Faulkner for the sixth as Lancashire collected two valuable bonus points in a match which has already lost over a day's allocation of overs.

Faulkner finished the day on 37 not out and the 36.3 overs in the long evening session made the sharpest of contrasts with a morning in which just two deliveries could be bowled.

Indeed, an early lunch was taken at 12.45pm, by which time the Old Trafford staff were hard at work mopping up the puddles caused by the earlier rain, but bad weather continued to bedevil the match with only 8.3 overs being bowled in the afternoon session.

In the brief period of play that could be squeezed in between the showers, Lancashire advanced to 120 for four off 34.3 overs with Croft on 17 not out and Davies unbeaten on 19.

Both batsmen flirted with danger, however.

Croft inside-edged a ball from James Porter just past the leg stump to the fine leg boundary while Davies survived a confident appeal for a catch at the wicket off the bowling of Reece Topley.

After another shower had delayed the resumption umpires David Millns and Richard Kettleborough decided that an early tea would be taken at 3.40pm and that play would resume at 4.00pm with 41.3 overs to be bowled.

In the final session of the day both batsmen took advantage of some wayward Essex bowling to stroke a succession of boundaries with Davies being particularly hard on seamers Topley and Porter.

However, the introduction of Liam Dawson's left-arm spin and Ravi Bopara's medium pace put a break on the run rate with the latter taking the wicket of Davies for 38 with a ball of full length to which the wicketkeeper-batsman was lbw.

Faulkner joined his skipper and batted securely for his 37 runs despite hitting just one boundary in his 57-ball innings.

Croft hit 12 fours in his 85 not out and will look to notch his second championship hundred of the season on the third morning.

Lancashire director of cricket Ashley Giles said: "I thought there were a couple of soft dismissals on the first day and all I did this morning was reiterate the importance of meeting our targets.

"One of those is to go out and get 400 and to do that someone's got to go out and get a score and we have to put our partnerships together.

"And we did that. I thought Crofty and Alex got stuck in really well and then I thought that James took it on really well.

"We finished as well as we could hope for considering all the weather that's been around.

"The forecast isn't great for tomorrow but all we can do is what's put in front of us and if it is fair for two days, we've still got an outside hope of a result of some sort.

"At the moment the focus has to be on getting to 400."

Essex head coach Paul Grayson said: "It's been a very frustrating day.

"We bowled well yesterday and picked up four wickets on what looks to be good pitch but Lancashire have batted very well today and it's been hard work for us.

"Hopefully we can come back strong tomorrow and pick up the remaining wickets and then bat well and see what happens."