IT was disappointing to lose to champions Yorkshire in our first LV= County Championship Division One match of the season – but I don’t think there’s any disgrace in that.

In first division cricket you can’t afford to have a bad hour. If you have a bad hour or two, 99 times out of 100 you are going to lose the game.

A defeat is difficult to take but there were a few positives with Tom Fell, Gareth Andrew and Jack Shantry playing well.

All our batters got runs in pre-season and they are the right men for the job and it’s just a case of going out there and doing it.

We stood toe-to-toe with Yorkshire for the first two days and that is something positive we took away from the game. We have got to learn from our mistakes quickly.

We have got a lot of games remaining, including our current match against Sussex at Hove, and we go in to every one trying to win.

We know Sussex will come hard at us with their four-pronged seam attack with the likes of Tymal Mills, Ajmal Shahzad and Steve Mogoffin. We have got to be ready for them.

If we perform like we did in the first innings against Yorkshire with bat and ball, and we can string that out over four days, I am sure we will be in a position to win matches.

We batted reasonably well in that first innings to get beyond the 300-run mark.

Fell, in particular, played fantastically well for his 114 after we lost two early wickets and there were some good contributions down the order and a couple of good partnerships.

We did well in patches with the ball but we had a couple of rough spells, too, after reducing Yorkshire to 3-2 in their first innings.

We dropped a chance which was a little bit of a turning point and Alex Lees played very well. We fought back and got them down to around 193-7.

Perhaps we should have been a bit more ruthless and knocked over Yorkshire for 230 to 250 and taken a good lead going into the second innings.

Tim Bresnan batted well and we didn’t bowl in the right areas to him and Yorkshire got themselves almost on parity and the momentum swung a bit towards them.

That third innings is so often the most vital in a game and it’s the important one when you need to stamp your authority.

Unfortunately, Yorkshire did that and we didn’t. We were six wickets down at lunch and it was an uphill task from there.

Yorkshire are the reigning champions for a reason.