Essex v Somerset, Surrey v Leicestershire, and more: county cricket, day two – live

Midway through its fifth day of action, the first of its second round of fixtures, Ollie Pope became the 11th person to score a century in Division One of the County Championship this season – and five of those play for Surrey. Jamie Smith already has two. The pre-season title favourites may have drawn their opening game but they are looking ominous, in this game and in general, and at stumps were 412 for six.

Things also look ominous for Leicestershire, if in a rather different way, as they settle into the top flight after last year’s promotion. Beaten by Sussex in their season opener, by the second session here, as Smith and Pope cantered towards triple figures, they looked equally underresourced in confidence, ideas and quality. They were buoyed somewhat by a couple of late wickets, if not by glances at the scoreboard.

A crowd of 4,700 assembled at the Oval on a bracingly cold early spring day which felt, mercifully for those with recent experience in the England team, a long way everything but geographically from any kind of Test cricket. Nevertheless, given that Surrey’s top six have all played for their country at the highest level, this game was always going to be parsed for potential international ramifications. The surprise perhaps was that the first person to stake a claim was Leicestershire’s Josh Hull.