BY THE time you read this, hopefully we’ll have got a good result against Middlesex.

They were top of Division One of the LV= County Championship and have started the season really well whilst we were still looking for our first win of the year.

But we put ourselves in a really good position at the end of our first innings.

We were put in first on a wicket that was really tricky but we still managed to get past 400, which was great on what was really a 280 all out kind of wicket.

We wanted to try and see if we could bowl them out and force the follow on because there was a bit of rain about and we were unable enforce a follow-on after bowling them out for 362.

We’re still finding our feet back in Division One, but we’re good enough to get there.

We’ve played some good cricket already this season but we’ve had bad two-hour periods – terrible two-hour periods, really – where we’ve let the opposition take control.

It definitely is so much tougher in Division One. I played in it between 2009 and 2011 and the gap between Division One and Division Two is definitely getting wider.

The players are getting more skilful and you have to make sure that you’re on your game all of the time.

We had a good win over Essex in our first T20 game last Friday.

I was 12th man and I was disappointed not to be playing but I was still there to cheer on the lads.

That’s the way it works – if you’re not in the team, you can still come along and be a part of the dressing room, which is always nice because we’ve got such a good bunch of lads.

A lot of the guys do that, as long as they haven’t got family commitments or things like that.

Also, there’s always a lot of second team cricket available to you if you want to keep yourself going.

I’m in the four-day side, which is quite tough on the body, so I’ll only really play the second team T20 stuff to try and push myself into the side.

We’ve got a second XI T20 game against Middlesex today and then a game on Tuesday (against the MCC Young Cricketers).