It felt like a Test match!

We certainly had a tough opening match on our return to top division championship cricket up at Old Trafford, where we had to fight all the way against Lancashire, who really are a quality outfit.

With the number of international players involved and the atmosphere out on the field, it felt like we were playing in a Test match!

I know we would all have wanted to win our first game back at the top. But with the state of the weather and the conditions we had to bat in, I think we all left feeling satisfied that we had fought all the way and taken the same amount of points as they had from the match.

I have been pretty pleased with my opening form with the bat this season. After having a disappointing time batting-wise last year, by my standards, I felt I had something to prove. So to get 86 against Hampshire in the Friends Provident and follow that up with two half centuries against an international bowling attack was exactly what I needed to do.

I was keen to start well and, with the pressure on places, I know I have to keep it going if I want to hold on to my place in the team.

The weather did us no favours in Sunday’s one-day game at Worcester and, having virtually got them all out for 150, I would certainly have backed us to have won the game and taken two more points. As it is, now we have three from our two games.

We have got two Friends Provident matches coming up in the space of three days this weekend. The first one is going to be a tough one, taking on Hampshire down at The Rose Bowl and, after beating them here at Taunton, they will be looking to get their revenge on Friday afternoon.

However we will be just as keen to take the two points from the game to boost our chances of going through to the quarter-final stages of this competition.

On Sunday we take on Glamorgan back here at Taunton and, after our last performance at home, we will be hoping that a good crowd comes along to cheer us on to hopefully another home win.

The arrival of Zander De Bruyn has put us all under even more pressure to perform well whenever we go out onto the pitch. He is a top-class all-rounder so we all know we have to do well to keep our places in the team.

The selectors have got a real headache at the club now and I think that they were very brave to retain the same 11 players who won the previous game for the match at Worcester on Sunday. Nobody has the divine right to a place in the team so it is fiercely competitive for places at the club this year.

Next week we play our first championship match of the season when we take on Hampshire on Wednesday. They are a good side and will be tough opponents for us but we will be playing hard to try to chalk up our first win in the red ball competition.

It's good to be back

It is really good to have the new cricket season underway at last, and even better that Somerset have had such an excellent start to the 2008 summer.

After a winter of hard training it was good to go out to Abu Dhabi in March to take part in the Pro-Arch Trophy where won three out of our four matches, but almost as important as that was the chance to get outside and practice on grass again.

We also had a good pre-season back at home where we were successful in all of our matches, including our opening first class game against Cambridge University up at Fenners, where despite it being freezing cold we recorded a resounding victory by 281 runs with a day to spare.

With so many players on the staff now at the County Ground everybody is fighting for places and every opportunity has to count so I knew that I needed to get some good runs to my name to stake a claim for a place in the opening game - which I managed to do up at Cambridge where I made 109 in the first innings at just under a run a ball which I was pretty happy with.

It was nice to get back to play cricket at Taunton on a decent wicket on Sunday and even better to beat Hampshire.

I was very happy with the way that I struck the ball and to be out there to bring the match home was exactly what I was aiming to do when I walked out to the middle.

A win to start us off in the Friends Provident competition is exactly what we wanted and we will be looking for a repeat performance when we take on Worcestershire up at New Road on Sunday.

One of the good things about the way that we played on Sunday was that, even though we found ourselves 91-4 chasing 221 with 21 overs to go, we didn’t panic.

We stuck to our guns and paced the reply exactly right, which is an aspect of the game that we have been working on because in times gone by we would have thrown that game away and been 30 runs short.

This just shows how much we have matured as a team and also what we can achieve if we work together - see out the good deliveries and punish the bad ones.

I was particularly pleased for John Francis, who has been out of the game for sometime but also for myself because in the past I might have hit the ball down long on’s throat instead of bringing the game home like I did on Sunday.

It is great news for Somerset that James Hildreth has signed a three-year extension to his contract that will keep him at the club until the end of the 2011 season. He is a hugely talented and exciting batsman and will form the nucleus of the team for many years to come.

We are back in Division One in the county championship for the first time since we were relegated at the end of the 2002 season. There will not be any easy games this season, with teams like Sussex, Lancashire and Surrey all in there with us and that is why we have bolstered the squad in the way that we have.
We know that our opener against Lancashire at Old Trafford will be tough because they have got some high-class players, but we have always performed against good teams so it is a chance for us to raise our own game and get stuck in and show what we are all about this season.