AS you can imagine, I was feeling pretty down on Sunday evening.

Not only had we lost to Derbyshire in the Clydesdale Bank 40 but I picked up an injury which is likely to keep me out for around three weeks.

I was running in to bowl the fifth ball of my third over and just felt this bang in my body, it was the intercostal muscles around the ribs.

There was no way I could have carried on so I came off the field not feeling great.

I went for an ultrasound scan yesterday afternoon and it found very little, but the physio says that’s a good thing.

So he’s booked me in for an MRI scan some time today and then we can start planning how quickly I can get back on the field.

The ultrasound did show it wasn’t as bad as first feared and it means that I’m likely to be out for around three weeks rather than five.

In my absence, Moeen Ali is going to be taking on the captaincy and I’m sure he’ll do a fine job.

Mo has matured a lot over the last couple of years and has a very good cricket brain.

He also has the likes of Vikram Solanki, Damien Wright and Alan Richardson to call on for advice.

To have players like that to assist has been a great help for me. It is so important to utilise their experience whenever possible and I know that Vik, Wrighty and Alan will help Mo out as much as possible.

Tomorrow brings our return match with Warwickshire and, although I’m not playing, I shall be up at Edgbaston as much as possible.

Hopefully, we can go there and get our first LV= County Championship Division One win.

At Taunton last week, we had another chance to win a match only to finish on the losing side.

Wrighty put us in a great position on the third morning after bowling exceptionally well.

But our batting let us down. As a top order, and I include myself in this, we are not getting the required runs.

We all thought that around 250 was gettable, it wasn’t going to be easy but it was within our reach.

The wicket at Taunton was a lot greener than usual, but the outfield was as quick as ever so there were no excuses.

It was disappointing to lose to Derbyshire on Sunday and, had we scored another 20 or so runs on top of our 171, it could have been interesting.

But unfortunately we didn’t bat for the full 40 overs and there is only one way to describe that — criminal.