Craig Meschede believes Glamorgan are playing their best four-day cricket of the season after the all-rounder put his team within sight of victory over Derbyshire.

Meschede took the wickets of the top three Derbyshire batsmen at Colwyn Bay before the visitors were forced to follow-on on day two of the Specsavers Division Two County Championship match.

Glamorgan are still bottom of the table – although they do have games in hand – but look well-placed for their first victory of the season at some stage on Tuesday following the record-breaking heroics of Aneurin Donald on day one.

Meschede’s 3 for 33 helped bowl out Derbyshire for 177 – in reply to Glamorgan’s 518 – and the visitors were 78-1 in their second innings at the close.

“Without a doubt it’s been the best Championship performance of the campaign, since we haven’t started too well in this competition,” said South African Meschede, who joined Glamorgan from Somerset before the start of last season.

“I think the game’s going very well – it’s in our hands, the boys have toiled really hard to force the follow-on.

“But we’ve been playing well leading up to this game and it’s nice to see the rewards.”

Glamorgan had added a further 37 runs to their overnight score and were all out for 518, with Meschede undefeated on 60.

Meschede then took three wickets, and Graham Wagg and Andrew Salter picked up two apiece, as Derbyshire conceded a 341-run deficit on first innings.

Wagg then claimed another – Harvey Hosein, having been promoted to open after top-scoring with 27 not out – but Derbyshire made a stronger start to their second attempt.

Derbyshire head coach John Sadler said: “There’s always hope, we’re quite a long way behind in the game at the minute but we know that if we play as we can, we might be able to put them under a bit of pressure on the last day.

“We know we’ve under-performed so far with the bat with too many soft dismissals, but we’ve got another chance to put it right.”