Steve Rhodes  RSS feed | About

WE were all glad that Vikram Solanki won the toss on the first day of the season - he's been practising all winter!

But it was frustrating that we couldn't close out the win against Warwickshire.

We performed brilliantly with three of the batters got hundreds and the bowlers bowled well as a unit.

We still feel there is another 10 per cent to come from us and in sport that is a great deal.

We were disappointed with the way things went at Bristol, but tomorrow we will be aiming to put that right.

Stephen Moore batted brilliantly at Edgbaston, sadly in the first innings I missed a straight ball and was on my way - hopefully that won't happen too many times this season.

I was happy with the way that I bowled against Warwickshire, taking a few wickets, and good old bucket-hands Graeme Hick was there to take the catches.

But I would have swapped all those wickets for figures of 0-150 to win the match.

Vikram pulled off a bit of a masterstroke in the second innings. He told me to go around the wicket on the Saturday morning and I took a wicket he very first ball - think he may be turning into Mike Brearley.

Steve Magoffin has fitted into the dressing room brilliantly. Like all Aussies he works hard and he is a different type of bowler to what we have got. But a few of the lads think that he has been sprouting a few grey hairs and now they have gone, so we think he is using the old Grecian 2000, we not absolutely sure, so we will be keeping an eye out on it.

We saw the start of the In-dian Premier League last week and that is going to change the face of the game very quickly - just like Kerry Packer did in the 1970s.

We had the opening ceremony on in the dressing room and all the young lads were fixed on the Washington Redskins cheerleaders, of course none of us married guys were looking!

The IPL has brought a lot of money into the game and with talk of a $20million winner-takes-all match on the horizon that is going to be one hell of a pay day for just one game of cricket.

Yesterday we saw the introduction of pink balls and being a bit of a man's man I'm not too sure about this.

Now pink has done brilliantly for women and breast cancer, but I would like to keep it separate from cricket.

Cricket is never going to have the rough and tumble of football, but I don't want to be hit by a pink ball.

But like the IPL this could change the face of cricket.

Lastly I want to wish you all a happy St George's Day for tomorrow and hopefully good old St George will bring us some luck in our game against Leicestershire.

9:15am Tuesday 22nd April 2008

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