County cricket: Surrey v Somerset, Essex v Kent, and more on day four – live

“Sorry you’ve been dragged down south... although I do have particularly fond memories of visits to a batting coach at the Oval, during the days when shift work at the BBC World Service made holding down a place in a half-decent (who am I kidding?

Photograph: Frank Baron/The Guardian”On another occasion, our musings were interrupted by a (relatively) young Alec Stewart and Mark Butcher working on improving their technique, which was quite impressive given that it was a) only 11-20 on the first morning of a Championship game, b) that Surrey were batting first and c) they were both in the top three of the order that day.

”Apart from the fact that there was a chunk of the weekend where it wasn’t working at all, several of the scores on the left-hand side of the page spent most of Sunday with spurious Ds giving the erroneous impression that some highly creative bartering had been going on amongst the captains.

Then there are the stupid omissions that seem to be de rigueur when the IT whizzkids roll out something new, like the totals in the scorecard, which despite the established traditions are not accompanied by the number of wickets, meaning everyone has to scroll up and down needlessly or count up the stricken batters themselves.

Jordan Cox rolling-pinned 116 from 89 balls against his old county as Essex built up a stout second innings lead; Ben Compton had been last man out for 165 as Kent limped past the follow-on target.

Idiosyncratic fifties by Joe Root and Harry Brook, alongside 113 from Adam Lyth, helped Yorkshire plunder the Gloucestershire attack before pulling the rug away from their second innings.