IN the LV= County Championship matches, you want to be playing for the best part of the four days, so it is always frustrating to lose a day to the weather.

You have to hit the ground running and try and force a win inside three days, which can be difficult, but we’ve done that down at Kent and at Oxford.

There’s no reason we can’t do that again in this match if we bowl like we have done.

There is still a lot of cricket to be played and a big chance of still getting a result.

The back-to-back wins over Gloucestershire and Kent in Division Two have given the lads lots of confidence.

Even though we didn’t get a win in the first four games of the season, I don’t think we played particularly badly and now things have started to come together nicely.

We’ve bowled well to get sides out and we’ve had a bit of a change of luck with things starting to go our way.

Although Richo (Alan Richardson) has taken 12 wickets in the last two games, he didn’t bowl badly in the previous ones when he didn’t get so many.

His fortunes are quite similar to the team as a whole – he’s been beating the bat and not getting the wickets, but all of a sudden things are going his way.

We didn’t get nervous trying to wrap up the game against Gloucestershire, a bit frustrated maybe, but sometimes you have to give credit to the opposition.

Gareth Roderick batted very well and the wicket was flat and slow under the sunshine, so it was difficult to dislodge them. I thought we kept our discipline pretty well and kept the ball in the right areas, then after tea, Chris Russell was able to take the last couple quickly and we could knock off 30-odd to win.

We will always be keen to risk losing to try and win a game because of the way the points are set up, so it was important to get the win.

I thought we bowled well in the first innings, particularly Richo, then we batted well with Moeen Ali, Matt Pardoe and myself getting off to a good start but, looking back, probably the most important partnership was the one between Gaz Andrew and Jack Shantry.

Those runs down the order gave us the lead we needed to try and force the victory.

Shants’ run-out was pretty comical and there’s nothing more funny than him getting angry, but he is a guy who tries his heart out and gives everything for the team.

They are best of friends again now though!

In our Yorkshire Bank 40 defeat to Northamptonshire, we probably let them score too many for that pitch.

It was very slow and had been flood-damaged, so there wasn’t much grass on it.

They probably got 20 too many and dropped catches cost us dear, which was unlike us as we’ve caught well in all competitions this season.

Although it was difficult to score, I felt myself and Thilan Samaraweera were just starting to get on top and we both got out to lbws that, having looked back at the video, were a little unfortunate.