Gloucestershire have reached 112 for two in the second innings of their Rothesay County Championship game with Kent on Sunday, a lead of 191.

Ben Charlesworth was their top scorer with 58, but bad light halted play with 36 overs remaining and the forecast for tomorrow suggests a draw is probable.

Earlier Ben Compton hit his highest Kent score of 178 as the hosts made 393, a first innings deficit of 79.

Kent were 318 for seven when play began in Baltic conditions, with the lights on and in front a meagre crowd.Compton was on 144 overnight and had only moved to 148 when he flashed at Marchand de Lange and was dropped by Cameron Green at first slip. He swatted the next ball to the midwicket boundary to pass 150, but Jas Singh produced just one elegant cover drive for four before being caught behind off Matt Taylor for five.

Taylor was denied a second wicket when Kashif Ali hit him straight into Miles Hammond’s chest at short leg and Kashif somehow survived for 89 balls to make 34 not out, including a six he swept off Ollie Price that sailed over cow corner.

He put on a stand of 60 with Compton, who finally went when he charged down the wicket to Graeme van Buuren and was stumped by James Bracey. Nathan Gilchrist lasted just eight balls before he was lbw to the same bowler for one, leaving Kent seven short of an additional batting point.

Ben Charlesworth was on 17 when he edged Jas Singh, but Chris Benjamin, keeping in place of Harry Finch who has a broken finger, put the chance down.

Cameron Bancroft went lbw to Joey Evison for 22 and Jack Leaning had Charlesworth caught by Zak Crawley at cover. Light rain then began to fall but the players stayed out until 3.50 pm when the light deteriorated to the point that the umpires called an early tea.

Rainfall prevented a resumption and play was abandoned for the day at 5.18 pm.

Kent’s Ben Compton: “Obviously I’m very chuffed on a personal level and I thought the morning was really important with Kashif Ali. We put an invaluable partnership together I think, both to try and get closer to the deficit and to try and take some time out of the game. It’s hopefully going to mean that it’s harder for us to lose if it comes to that but also sets up the game potentially tomorrow depending on what they want to do.”

(On back to back centuries).“There’s no secret mate, we’ve played on some better wickets this year in terms of pace on the pitch so yes it’s been more seamer friendly at times, particularly on day one and day two, but as we saw with the Middlesex game in particular, it kept its pace throughout and then became really enjoyable for batting and Tawanda and I really enjoyed that.

“This one’s very similar, probably a little on the slower side, but it still allows you to score freely, once the new ball dies down. That’s the tricky time and if you can get through that then it’s good to score.

“It was a rather strange last hour of play given the way they started their second innings, I thought by the looks of it they were flying and they were going to try and make a total and leave us to see what we could chase and set up a game. The last hour was a bit strange in that respect so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Obviously we’ll try and do our best to get them out tomorrow if we can and we’re still looking to win the game but we’ll just have to play it by ear.”

Gloucestershire’s Ben Charlesworth said: “I think at the end of every day so far we’ve been in a commanding position, and it was the same today. We’ve just discussed in the dressing room that we probably didn’t stride away from them as we’d have liked, to try and get us to the point where we can try and win the game tomorrow, but we’re definitely still in front of the game and if all the time and overs were available I think it would have been helpful to us. Hopefully we’ll try to push for a win tomorrow but it’s looking like that might be tricky.

“I think for me personally I try and play the scenario as best as I can, I struggle when I sort of drift away from trying to do what the team wants, so yeah, in my head I was thinking we can get a quick lead here and it gives us more time to bowl them out tomorrow. So that was in the forefront of my mind and might have helped me get a few away early.”

(Were they thinking about a number for a declaration?) “I think to be honest we expected to play more today, so if we’d played another 10 or 15 overs we might have started talking about putting our foot on the gas but obviously we didn’t get back out there after tea so there wasn’t really any time for that discussion to be had.

“Based on what happened last week, with Kent chasing down that score on the last day, that always plays in your head. It was doing plenty on day one but as the days have gone by it has got better and it’s a quick scoring ground here as well, so chasing is going to be the preferred method to win a game, which obviously is not ideal with us losing the toss, so I think that was a bit of a hammer blow. I think to win the game from there after losing the toss you have to play perfect cricket. We’ve tried our best so far and like I said we’re on top of the game, but it’s got to be perfection at this point.”