My second column comes from my study as I catch up with daily news and scorecards from the games just gone, as my girlfriend watches trash TV with the volume up loud!

So, Somerset. After a gusty draw last week, Essex certainly pulled off a special win at Taunton to earn a first Division One win of the season.

To be honest, the first innings batting performance wasn’t great, with a huge collapse and low score.

But what a turnaround. Alastair Cook (110) showed his class, setting the tone at the top of the innings with Nick Browne. Then we had Tom Westley’s cool 86 not out with Dan Lawrence seeing the game home.

Let’s not forget Neil Wagner’s six wickets - his short ball fast bowling unsettled batsmen and forced them into make errors, catching a few balls in the torso as well!

The mood in the camp is fantastic. We have put a few doubters to rest who had us as the number one side to get relegated and we are confident we can not only compete but win by a comfortable margin.

But the tough challenges keep on coming. Next up we face last season’s champions Middlesex at Lords - the home of cricket.

It’s their first game at home this season and they have a strong seam attack in (Steven) Finn, (James) Fuller and (Toby) Roland-Jones, so I’m expecting it to be a seamer friendly wicket.

It will certainly be more so than the used wicket at Taunton (which personally I don’t think is right so early in the season - it looks horrendous in pictures).

With it being a greener wicket I would imagine we will play the extra seamer even though Ash Zaidi was brilliant in the last game.

Aaron Beard is going well after recent success, and I have an outside chance of being included in the squad after getting a good amount of overs under my belt.

All will be revealed soon as we prepare for another tough game on Friday.