AFTER our victory at Gloucestershire last week, we are riding high in the LV County Championship Division Two table and our aim now has to be to go up as champions.

We gave the same statement at the start of the season following the additions we made to what was an already good squad.

Everyone has been contributing and it has been an unbelievable team effort — the dressing room is buzzing at the moment and we are feeding off each other’s success.

We have the leading wicket-taker in the country in Kabir Ali, the leading run-scorer in Stephen Moore, who has passed his 1,000 for the season, and the leading championship run-scorer in Vikram Solanki.

Vik’s innings of 270 in Cheltenham was one of the best you’ll ever see — it was phenomenal.

I was unfortunate enough to play in the match that Brian Lara scored his 400 against England, but Vik’s was unbelievable. He had a strike-rate of 120 and didn’t look to play a shot in anger.

In that innings, Mooro got to his 1,000, which is a fantastic effort, and we batted all the way down with Steve Davies playing a superb knock.

But the win in Cheltenham was set up by Kabby. People say that he only takes wickets at New Road because the ball nibbles around.

Make no mistake — that wicket at Cheltenham was as flat as you’ll get and he went to get his 50 wickets for the season. We went on to break records left, right and centre.

Then we headed off to Horsham for what turned out to be a debacle.

We batted beautifully again, of course, led by Vik and then, with only three balls needed for a match, it got a little moist.

We could have quite easily finished that over to get a game in, but it wasn’t to be.

Hopefully, tomorrow we will have James Pipe returning to New Road when we play Derbyshire.

He is carrying a little bit of an injury at the moment but I’m sure Pipey is desperate to play against us.

Derbyshire are a dangerous side but, with the way we are playing at the moment, then we have to be looking at another maximum-point haul.

It was a bit of a shock to hear Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood had resigned from the captains’ positions in the England squad.

I played under Vaughany and he is a fantastic captain — for me one of the best in the world.

Hopefully, people will remember Michael for being the captain who led England to the highest number of wins and not for the most recent results.

Vaughany took England to a level we haven’t been at in a long time and I really hope that is the way he is recalled.

Regarding Colly, that really came out of the blue. But, for the reasons he said he has gone for, we can only admire him for being big enough to say so.

In this day and age, it is rare for someone to say this is affecting their performance.

It would have been nice if the selectors had looked at Vik for the job because I truly believe he would have been the best man for the job.