THERE will be a few eyes on Trent Bridge from today as we look to pick up our first win of the County Championship season.

With England delaying the naming of the Test squad to face the West Indies, Graeme Swann and myself will be going head-to-head.

Swanny obviously had a great winter before flying home to have an operation on his elbow and it looks like he has come back really well.

For me, I believe that I too have started the season in good form. I felt that I bowled well at Hampshire on Sunday and thought that I made an impact with the bat too.

What will be good for England is that both of us put pressure on each other because in cricket you are only as good as your last game.

We couldn’t have asked for a better start in the Friends Provident Trophy.

Vikram Solanki and Steve Davies got us off to a great start and then Moeen Ali batted superbly.

Ben Smith backed Mo up really well. To think we got 320, when 280 was probably about par on that pitch, was fantastic.

That was also the perfect response to our four-day game at Hampshire too. The only thing we got right in that match was winning the toss.

There can be no excuse for how we played, we were second best in all departments.

We have got some hard work ahead of us in Division One starting today.

Over the past two or three years Notts, along with Durham, have been two of the best sides.

We have to show a lot of improvement on last week and hopefully get in a position to win the match.

Losing Kabir Ali to injury on Sunday will be a massive blow. We are not sure how long he will be out until he has scans tomorrow.

At the start of the season we said that we wanted to have either Kabby or Simon Jones on the pitch for every game — if not both. Unfortunately that isn’t going to be the case for a while. But what is good news for us is that Ashley Noffke has arrived.

He has slotted in really well. He’s a typical Aussie, a bloke’s bloke. When Kabby hobbled off on Sunday, he was trying to talk himself on to the field. Ash is going to be a great addition to our squad and I’m certain that he will live up to his billing.

After Nottinghamshire, we jump on a plane to Belfast to play Ireland in our next Friends Provident match.

It is all pretty hectic at the moment, but we can’t use that as an excuse.

I’m sure that Ireland will be pretty buoyant after they qualified for the World Cup, but the way that we play one-day cricket we don’t fear anyone — in fact if anyone saw us on Sunday I think teams will be fearing us.