If anyone had forgotten what it was like to field in county championship cricket we were reminded pretty quickly last week.

After setting the game up nicely in the first innings we found it very hard to break down the Glamorgan batting on a very flat pitch. Credit to our bowlers for the way they stuck to their areas but in the end the pitch was the winner!

From my point of view it was great to get some runs in the second innings. Over the years I seem to have batted with KP a lot and I've got the day it's a pretty good view standing at the other end.

We also seem to go pretty well for the team when we are there together. At the start you can sometimes feel a bit of pressure to get off strike and let him do his thing but once you get in and settled its a great place to be.

I spent most of the first innings with my training gear on watching the action on the TV in the dressing room while Kumar and Steve Davies went about their business in the middle. Venturing outside to clap the milestones that just kept coming. That partnership in particular was great to watch. If our top order fires the way we know it can, I could be spending a serious amount of time in my training trousers.

If that's the case, we should be in a pretty good place. Good teams tend to spend more time bowling than they do batting. This year, trying to bat big once and bowl sides out twice has to be our plan. In Gareth Batty we still have one of the best spinners in the country so if wickets deteriorate as games go on we should be able to take 10 second innings wickets.

I'm pretty excited about where we can go as a team this season. We have a lot of exciting players, you only have to look at some of the names in the second team. Having said that, championships and promotions aren't won on paper and we know that our performances must improve on last year.

A lot of good things were done but now we must push for results. I got two out of the three predictions for surrey players to appear at Malahide next week correct and we have already had a bit of banter yesterday morning.

I told Jason Roy, caught Wilson bowled Murtagh for 2. It would be amazing if that prediction were to come to fruition because as I can testify, Jason is a fine player. Last year he almost single handedly got us to Finals day with his explosive batting at the top of the order but we will have our plans and no doubt the wicket and home ground will be to our advantage.

It's great to see Surrey producing young players deemed good enough to play for England. It's a massive club and we should be producing England players, hopefully Jason and Zafar will be the first two of a long list.

The England side is full of youth and will be looking to impress. That can perhaps make them more dangerous than an experienced England side. We will all know them pretty well, they are established county cricketers and with a good number of our lads playing in England, the majority we will have played against many times.

The biggest thing we will have in our favour is that most of our team have the experience of playing in big international games. If the weather is set fair hopefully it will be a great day next Friday.