Lord's is where we all want to be

It was disappointing for us to lose out to Glamorgan in the Friends Provident Trophy on Sunday, especially after getting off to such a good start in the competition.

This is the only one day competition which is played to the same format as One Day International matches and it is also the only competition which has got a Lord’s final - a place where all cricketers want to play if they can.

I have got some very fond memories of us lifting the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy at Lord’s back in 2001 and along with the rest of the Somerset team we are very keen to repeat that experience this season.

After being unable to get the game up at Worcester completed the previous weekend, to go down to The Rose Bowl and beat a big side like Hampshire was very pleasing. It was a good all round team effort with James Hildreth who made an unbeaten 112 for us batting absolutely magnificently.

Hampshire were boosted by having Kevin Pietersen in their side so to notch up the double over them tasted even sweeter.

Zander de Bruyn played beautifully on his Somerset debut and his innings of 79 was very much in the Keith Parson mould, very controlled and showed what an experienced player he is. He looks like a great addition to the side for 2008.

We then came back to Taunton on Sunday where we threw the match away. Glamorgan did have a good attack which included Jason Gillespie and Jamie Dalrymple but we let it slip badly to lose out when we were only chasing 220 odd to win.

If we had beaten Glamorgan on Sunday we would have seven points from our four games, Now we know that we need to try to win as many of the remaining matches to be certain of qualifying for the last eight of the Friends Provident, the first of which is up at Bristol on Sunday against Gloucestershire, which is always a tough place to play.

Alfonso Thomas looks to be another quality addition to the squad and bowled the ball in good areas on Sunday. He may not be too tall but he certainly gets the ball to skid through and will be a very useful player for Somerset.

We are currently playing our first Division One LV County Championship match at the County Ground this season against Hampshire.

This is another huge match for us and after our good showing up at Lancashire we will be looking to do even better against Hampshire even though they have got some quality players and are likely to have England player Pietersen in their team.