Lancashire v Essex, Yorkshire v Warwickshire and more: county cricket – live!

LIVE – Updated at 15:22

County Championship: Join Tanya Aldred for updates from around the grounds on the first day of the latest round of matches.

Vilas at short point somehow manages to hold onto a buxom shot from Browne that is slammed into his body. Essex 136-3. Poor Browne, that was a super innings for 71.

“The reason Romeo’s teaser ain’t so simple,” muses Geoff Wignall, “is presumably because Hick’s 1000 included two innings against MCC and one against the touring West Indies. I suspect the answer is Glenn Turner but I wouldn’t stake anyone’s mortgage on it.”

Romeo has sent me a teaser, it’s not, he promises me, as simple as it looks.

“Shan Masood still needs 154 to reach 1000 runs before the end of May.

“Who was the last player to score 1000 runs in the County Championship

before the end of May?”

At Lord’s, Stokes is in, and has hit two fours in his 15 not out. And something to mull over before the first Test. Back to the eighties.

Only three members of England's Test squad to face New Zealand average more than 30 with the bat