WE arrived back from our pre-season tour to Cape Town with everyone looking forward to the new campaign.

The season seemed a long way off when we were spending three days a week in the gym during November. It’s now finally here with most of our training under our belts.

We started our preparations with a trip to Taunton for a one-day game against Somerset. Conditions were slightly different to those in Cape Town with players wearing at least four layers of clothing and some even with silly little gloves on (the lads from out west!).

Somerset posted 383 in their 50 overs which was probably a few too many, even if the boundary was only 40 yards long.

We set about our target cautiously knowing that we needed wickets in hand to push on in the final 20 overs. Gareth Rees (138) and Mike Powell (70) gave us a platform to launch from.

Enter my old mate Mark Wallace who struck the ball brilliantly, hitting seven huge sixes into the car park and even smashing one of our boys’ car windscreens in the process!

I noticed last week that England announced a 30-man squad for the Twenty20 World Cup. They have picked four keepers but not Wally.

I know he is my mate but none of them are deadly enough at the end of an innings. I have seen him win three or four games for us with a strike rate of over three runs a ball.

It’s again the old policy of picking the players that the media push for and not the players that produce the goods.

The game was won with a four off the last ball from Dean Cosker and it felt like we had won the championship. It was a great feeling to get a win in that way and if we can emulate that feeling regularly we are in for an exciting season.

We followed this with another good win against Hampshire with everyone getting valuable practice ahead of our first Friends Provident game against Lancashire on Sunday.

Good Friday was spent with a team building day at the Vale of Glamorgan Hotel. The whole squad and support staff were present for a variety of activities including off-road 4x4 driving, clay pigeon shooting and paint balling.

Robert Croft was appropriately dressed and having done a lot of shooting fancied himself for top prize. Unfortunately he was out done by one of the younger members who had never picked up a gun before!

So the summer has finally arrived and I feel we prepared extremely well in the pre-season and I’m very confident.

We are boosted by our new overseas signing Mark Cosgrove, who played for us in 2006 and is a very exciting player to watch. Watching him bat is like looking at the highlights of a game! Also our new Kolpak signing Garnett Kruger can bowl up towards the 90mph mark has been signed to give us some extra fire power.

We start our first County Championship game at Lord’s this morning. It is the best cricket ground in the world by far. The hairs stand up on your neck as you walk through the long room and onto the field.

It will be a tough start for us as Middlesex have a lot of talented young players so we will need to be ready from ball one.

It’s imperative that we have a good start to the season so we are still able to compete for trophies in the final third of the season.

It will also be good to catch up with my sister, who works for Eurosport in London. All these away games mean a lot of travelling and watching films on our team bus.

By the time I write another column I could be competing with Jonathan Ross for the film critic of the year job!