FINALLY all the speculation can end now, Stephen Moore is staying with Worcestershire and that is obviously brilliant news for the club.

Moorey has committed himself to Worcestershire for three years and, as we have all seen this year, he has taken his game to the next level.

He is a massive part of our squad and, had he chosen to leave, we would have had a huge hole to fill.

And all this comes on the back of Matt Mason getting a new deal too.

Mase has been given a dual role with the club helping out with the bowlers and it is a real positive move to keep him within our environment.

He has been helping with the bowlers for some time now and getting this role is brilliant for him.

I know he still has playing at the forefront of his mind and he is getting stronger and better each game.

While we were without a game in the championship last week, we have remained top of our division by 10 points and, with only four games to go, one of them being against Warwickshire, we are in a very strong position.

I suppose you could have a wry smile at the weather helping us out for once because that game in hand Warwickshire had over us has counted for very little.

With only four games left, we must be looking to win at least two of them, including the one against Warwickshire, if we are to go up as champions.

We are hungry to get back to action against Essex down at Colchester this week and that is going to be a tough game for us.

They will be on a high after beating Kent in the Friends Provident Trophy final over the weekend — especially as many people thought Kent would win it.

Over the last week, myself, Moorey and Vikram Solanki went off to play for the PCA Masters team in a Twenty20 match against the touring South Africans.

We all did pretty well. Moorey hit a 50 in just 30-odd balls, Vik took a hat-trick of catches — one of them being a brilliant one-handed diving catch — and I took one wicket for just over 20 runs.

It could have been a lot less, but we had a few elder statesmen in our side so they were a little bit slow getting around the field.

Kabir Ali was with the England Lions squad last week and he said that it was another good experience being around that set-up again.

He has been having a great season, in fact I can’t remember the last time he has had a bad one.

Last Friday I went up to Wombourne Cricket Club to do a coaching session with the junior section.

They have a fantastic set-up there and we had more than 50 kids taking part. They said, had it not been for the school holidays, there would have been over 80.

It is great to see so many youngsters involved. There were five or six games going on around the outfield and the coaches there do a sterling job.