ALTHOUGH we have had mxed results in the Friends Life t20, I still believe we can qualify for the quarter-finals.

It is tight in the Midlands, Wales and West group and I think we’ll have to win three, if not four, of our last five matches to progress.

But in Twenty20 cricket you can put runs together and the eight-run win at Somerset on Sunday has given us a lot of confidence.

Prior to that, it was bitterly disappointing to lose against Warwickshire last Friday.

I thought we did well in the first-half of the game with the bat — it was a good pitch and 170-175 would have been a par score so to get 188 was good.

Unfortunately, we didn’t execute our yorkers and slower balls as well as we might have in their innings.

That said, you have got to give a lot of credit to Darren Maddy, who I thought played extremely well, and Varun Chopra who laid the foundations for them and we just couldn’t get the wickets.

However, we bowled a lot better at Somerset, particularly in the first powerplay.

The wicket at Taunton was quite slow and that really suited our bowlers.

Then I thought the spinners did well in the middle period before Joe Leach and Jack Shantry came on at the end and were superb.

In our innings, Alexei Kervezee produced a fantastic effort for 53, he played extremely well to get us through to a good score of 168 with a lightning quick outfield.

Alexei is doing really well at the moment and hopefully he’s coming into a bit of form. As well as his scores for us of late, he also made 110 for Bromsgrove against Kenilworth Wardens in the Birmingham League at the weekend.

We all know the quality he’s got and, although he struggled early on this season, hopefully now he can go from strength to strength.

Having played two t20 matches in a short space of time, we now switch our attention to the four-day game against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham tomorrow (11am).

Although it’s not ideal to continually move from one format to another, it’s part and parcel of being a professional cricketer and you have to adapt to the competitions.

Finally, it would be wrong of me not to mention the Ashes and the first Test was unbelievable.

There was a bit of controversy but I thought the skill level of both sides was fantastic. It was a fine advert for test cricket and the game in general.

It was compelling viewing throughout the five days at Trent Bridge and it sets up the rest of the series nicely.

If the rest of the matches are like that then we are in for a cracking summer.