FORTY-OVER cricket is becoming a lot more of a batter’s game at the moment.

The change to the rules that means you have to have five people in the ring means that there are a lot more runs being scored, which is what a lot of people like to see.

I’m lucky that I’m an all-rounder because I might find it difficult when I’m bowling but I’ll always have the chance to get some runs on the board.

We had a massive win against Durham on Sunday – we keep finding ourselves in close games but still going on to win.

We had them at 40-4 at one point but they still went on to score 241, which we probably shouldn’t have let them do. Ben Stokes is a great cricketer and had a really good game for them.

When I had to bat, I did have what happened last week (a pair against Gloucestershire) in the back of my mind and I just wanted to get off the mark.

You’re paid to try and win games for your club and I was really happy to be there to help get the winning runs for us but it was Michael Carberry and Jimmy Adams that had the great knocks and I wouldn’t have been able to get out there and go for the boundaries if it wasn’t for their partnership.

We’re top of our group and not a lot of teams win competitions and then go on to defend their titles - that’s what we’ve set out to try and do.

We played Lancashire last night and hopefully we got ourselves another win to make it five out of six, which is a big statement to the other teams in the competition.

The first thing that we’re concentrating on is reaching the knockout stage and if we can do that, then we’d back ourselves to progress from there.

Today, we’re up against Lancashire again but this time it’s in the championship.

We’ve played some good cricket in the four-day competition so far this season but we weren’t good at all against Gloucestershire and we’ve got to try and do everything we can to make up for that with a win this time.