A disappointing start

We have had a very disappointing start to the Twenty20 Cup campaign this year especially as this was one of the competitions that we earmarked as one of our strongest before the start of the season.

Things just haven’t happened yet for us this season and we have been poor in the middle order of our batting and been unable to see games home.

Having lost three games on the trot it is going to be difficult for us, but there is still a long way to go so if we can string together a run of victories we are still in with a shout. We are looking forward to notching up our first win when we play against Glamorgan at home and then moving on from there.

In our first match of the series we were chasing 202 to win. Justin Langer and Marcus Trescothick gave us a flying start but when you are chasing 10 an over for the second part of the game it is not easy. Northants also bowled very well, especially Jason Brown who is very experienced so I guess we knew that we were going to be up against it.

In Cardiff I think 170 was just out of our reach, 20 more than the 150 wicket that we thought that it was. Their three spinners bowled well and even though the ball didn’t spin very much we played some poor shots. Again we had a good start and looked like we were going to chase it down but then three or four quick wickets and we were in trouble.

This was another middle order fault so this is something that we need to look to rectify.

In the game on Saturday against Warwickshire it was the same story really and after another good start by the opening two we just threw wickets away. Neither James Hildreth nor myself have got any runs in this competition and we are desperate to do do.

We have both been working very hard in the nets trying to improvise and work out how we can score before we go for the bigger shots so we will be hoping to put some runs on the board to help us to win our remaining matches.

I think that what we have learned is to be more ruthless and having got that good start we need to kick on and actually do the job ourselves as opposed to leaving it for to somebody else to do, which is something we have been guilty of doing over the first three games.

In the four-day game we have been ruthless and we have been playing some really good cricket, which makes the way that we have performed in our opening Twenty20 matches all the more disappointing.

Twenty20 is a very short game and we could quite easily win our remaining matches, which we know is not beyond us so we have got to be thinking positively going into our next game.

If we can get onto a winning roll, we will keep with that habit because games come think and fast and before you have ended one game the next is only a few hours away. It’s a case of doing good things and remembering how you did those things because before you know it the game is on you and then it is over.

We know we just need to execute our plans a little bit better and try and squeeze teams that bit harder than we have been doing.

We get great support for our Twenty20 matches at Taunton so it has been disappointing that we have let them down in the way that we have.
Whether or not we will change the batting order around or not we will just have to wait and see but at the end of the day we just have to back ourselves and go out there and play with no fear which is what Justin Langer has been telling us to do.