THE equation is quite simple for us tomorrow — beat Ireland and we are in the quarter-finals of the Friends Provident Trophy.

Without speaking out of place, the difference between them and us is obscene — we are far superior.

But we all know that if we have a day like we did ag-ainst Leicestershire last Tuesday there is a danger, if they are on top of their game, that they could beat us.

We have to make sure we do everything right and not just turn up and expect the result.

The defeat against Leicestershire last week has helped us to be honest with ourselves.

After the game we sat down and had a massive talk about what had happened.

It was led by Vikram Solanki, but we all had our say. Vik said it was no good just saying all these things, we have to go out there and do them too.

We did that in the game against Hampshire on the Thursday and it must have been very pleasing for Vik to see that we had put in to practice what we had talked about.

Hopefully, we won’t have many more bad days like we did against Leicestershire.

As a team we must make sure that if one of our mates is looking a bit flat and down we have to give them a lift — we can’t leave it to other people.

It would have been nice to have gained revenge on Lei-cestershire on Saturday but we were frustrated by the weather.

The way we started, with Vikram smashing the ball to all parts, you would have made us favourites to win that game.

Now we face Ireland tomorrow knowing that a win will put us through to the quarter-finals on Saturday and, of course, it would be nice to get a home tie.

But we fear no-one at the moment in one-day cricket and we are not worried if we have to play away from home.

Friends at other counties have called us a ‘maverick’ team and I suppose we are a little — we are not afraid to attack.

But in playing like that there is the danger that we do have some days like we had against Leicestershire last week.

What has been pleasing this week is to see Chris Whelan get another career-best with his 4-27 in the victory over Hampshire and now Steve Davies is top of the Professional Cricketers Association’s Most Valuable Players table — Vik was there a couple of weeks ago, so we are looking good at the moment.

The Twenty20 Cup starts next Monday and it is a form of the game we have to embrace.

The West Indies captain Chris Gayle was pretty outspoken last week saying that he wouldn’t be sad to see the death of Test cricket.

I’m in the Andrew Strauss camp, Test and four-day cricket is the pinnacle of our sport. But there isn’t another sport in the world that can give you three unique forms of the game.

We haven’t found the right formula here at Worcester yet in Twenty20 and that is something we have to do because this year’s competition leads to qualification for the P20 next season.

This form of the game is something that children can really relate to as most of their games at school are played over the same number of overs.