If any side can claim to have adapted their skills to the specialist demands of the new League it must be Essex. Despite possessing one of the smaller playing staffs amongst the counties, their application took them to a well-merited third place in the League last year. This season, under the continuing skilled captaincy of Brian Taylor and with knockout specialists Keith Boyce (who was the first winner of the BBC2 Fastest Fifty award) and Robin Hobbs to call upon, they should again be one of the more successful sides in the competition.
During today's tea interval at approximately 4.0 pm, Lord's Taverner John Arlott reads a selection of his own writings on Somerset cricket.
Frank Bough introduces the programme, which includes news of all today's other fixtures: Middlesex v Glamorgan, Kent v Lancashire, Leicestershire v Sussex, Northamptonshire v Hampshire, Worcestershire v Surrey