It feels like I have been playing cricket for non stop for the last 5 or 6 years.

To be honest I pretty much have been but there is always something pretty exciting about the start of a new county campaign.

There is that excitement of a clean slate, in our case the chance to gain promotion to division one of the county championship.

To build on our t20 form of the last two years and hopefully go one better this time around. We have a pretty well balanced squad now. An array of batting talent, none more so than Kumar Sangakkara who we signed over the winter on a two year deal as an overseas player.

I think everyone is looking forward to the sort of form that he showed in the World Cup for Sri Lanka. If he can bring half of the form with him for Surrey then we are surely in for something special. I guess the danger with having big names like Kumar and KP in the side is that the rest of us take our foot off the guess a bit and look to them to be the match winners.

We were perhaps guilty of that when we signed Graeme Smith two seasons ago and when he didn’t get the volume of runs that he would have liked in the first 3 or 4 games we were caught slightly flat footed.

Hopefully we will have learned from that experience and now that most of the line up is a pretty experienced one in first class cricket we hope to be able to post some pretty daunting scores. It was great to bat with KP last week in the game against Oxford UCCE. I had the best seat in the house when he was going well and it was great to be able to get some runs too.

Ive felt in pretty good touch in our pre season games so hopefully i’ll be able to carry that into the season. Last season was all about seeing profession in both the unit and especially the young players in the group and I think there can be little doubt that that was the case. 3 of our young batter scored 1000 runs in first class cricket, that can only bode well for the future.

But while last year was about progression there is a pretty strong feeling that this year should be about results. We know we have a good side and if we play to our ability we should have teams on the back foot. The skill is then being able to finish them off. A lot of times last year we just couldn’t quite win those critical moments of the game but another year older and wiser hopefully we will recognise those moments a little quicker and be able to pounce.

As well as having big season for Surrey a number of our young players will hope to break into the England as I’m sure they will look to prepare for the next World Cup. It wouldn’t surprise me if I was playing against at least two of my county team mates early next month at Malahide. Both Jason Roy and Zafar Ansari must be in with great shouts to make their ODI debuts in that game and it wouldn’t surprise me if Matt Dunn was there or thereabouts as well.

It would be great for the club to be once again producing England players as of years gone by and those three are certainly deserving of that accolade. Whether it be this year or a little but down the line I think they will all have long England careers.

For the next coupe of weeks though the focus will be on Surrey and getting some positive results. We have started pretty well against Glamorgan on a decent wicket and will now have to try and bowl them out twice inside two days before heading back to our first game at home against Essex next week.

We have had some good games against both of those sides over the last couple of years so hopefully we head into our week off having okayed some good cricket and with points to back it up!