HAVING returned to the County Championship this week we have started really well up at Leicestershire and are only going to get better and better in the four-day game.

I spoke to Simon Jones on Sunday night after he picked up another five-for and he said that they had bowled really well.

It doesn’t matter what the conditions are overhead or how green the wicket is, to bowl a team out for 120 is a fantastic effort.

Now we are looking at taking them out of the game and Vikram Solanki has played a huge part in that by scoring a superb century.

We had a mixed bag of results in the Twenty20 Cup but too often we didn’t perform well enough in all three areas of the game.

In this format, there isn’t the time, like there is in the four-day game, to turn it around.

But there have been several good performances throughout the competition from our team.

Stephen Moore has not only scored runs but he has gone out there and scored them in a manner that has been really impressive. He’ll probably be the first to admit he hasn’t had the greatest of times in Twenty20 cricket but this year he has raised the bar a good few notches.

Mooro is a fine cricketer and it can be hard to go from one form of the game to another, but he has really improved.

Graeme Hick has gone out and played his natural game, while Daryl Mitchell has shone with the ball.

I think Chris Whelan deserves a special mention for how he played last week.

It can be very difficult to open the bowling for someone as young as him but he did really well and showed a lot of bottle to step up to the plate.

He has a very good slower ball and used it intelligently, bowled in the right areas and got some good players out.

Last week, we were hit with the news that Fidel Edwards won’t be coming for the second half of the season so there are some big decisions to be made over the next few days.

There are a lot of problems in finding a replacement, not just because of the amount of international cricket being played and the ICC Champions Trophy, which starts before our season ends, but because there is also a lot of ‘A’ internationals being played at this time of year.

Obviously, Steve Rhodes and Vik will be carefully looking at our fixtures, seeing who is available and who would be best suited.

If they can find like for like, then that would be great.

Personally, I think if they can’t find a like-for-like replacement for Fidel then perhaps a left-armer like Nathan Bracken, who has already been mentioned, or maybe even a bit of help for me with another spinner.

We begin the defence of our Pro40 title in a couple of weeks and it seems the youngsters have got their way with the music once again.

Not content with tossing Rick Astley aside in the dressing room, they have now managed to get hip-hop in our new theme tune to run out too.

The older brigade wanted a bit of swing but now we have got hip-hop — times are definitely changing!