Weather woe ruins return

We were all very keen to get back into championship cricket after a break of over a month and it’s just a shame that the weather didn’t help us in our game against Durham at Chester le Street.

We lost the whole of the first day’s play and the first session of day two so it was a big ask to try and get a result but we very nearly did!

I have to admit that we started off a bit shakily and lost three wickets with not many runs on the board before Zander de Bruyn and James Hildreth shared a good partnership, which was followed by a stand between Pete Trego and Craig Kieswetter and in the end we were happy to score 350.

We the bowled well to get them at 140 for six before they mounted a bit of a lower order rescue, which was not expected because they are a good side and bat quite a way down with the likes of Liam Plunkett who can get runs. We didn’t help ourselves either because we dropped a couple of catches.

We then batted again and set them a total, which was never easy playing against a bowling attack that included Steve Harmison on his own home patch who was sending it down at getting on for 90mph, but we did set them a target.

They lost two quick wickets after which I don’t think that were ever really interested in chasing it down so in the end we had to settle for 11 points which takes us up the table a bit in addition to which we have still got a game in hand over most of the other teams in the top division.

It was good to see James Hildreth back in the runs during the Durham game and he batted really aggressively. He would be the first to admit that he hasn’t enjoyed the best of form in recent games so it was good to see him very nearly get 50 in each innings.

Our current match against Kent is another that we must try to win, but they are few and far between in this division. However we have targeted them as a team that we can beat so will be going all out to work towards getting that result.

As soon as the championship match against Kent is over on Saturday we set off by coach for Arundel where we play Sussex in our opening Pro40 match of the season and I have to admit that I am looking forward to it.

I have always liked the Pro40 it’s a good format of the game and I have enjoyed success playing against Sussex when I scored a century down at Hove a few years ago.

After the match at Arundel we fly up to Durham for a floodlit Pro40 on Wednesday night after which we are away at Lords on Monday the following week, so we have got a lot of travelling in our opening three matches.
However if we can grind out a couple of wins on our travels then we will have got our 40 over campaign off to a good start