WE HAVE made a great start to the Royal London one-day Cup with two near perfect performances, especially against Notts on Saturday. But the great thing is that there’s still room for improvement.

Coming into the season we’ve had a bit more of a plan of how we want to play 50-over cricket.

I don’t want to give away any inside information out in case any of our opponents are reading this and know our game plan.

But what I will say is that the plans we’ve put in place at Notts and against Lancashire at Headingley over the last few days have worked brilliantly.

Although we could have got a few more runs at the end, going into that first innings against Lancashire on Monday, we’d have bitten your arm off for 296, especially when we were 80 odd for three.

The knocks played by Gary Ballance and Pete Handscomb were sensational.

The Lancashire lads might be slightly disappointed with how they bowled in the middle, but those two put the attack and the pressure back onto them by playing proper cricket shots.

I think we perhaps went a little bit too early with our firepower down at the bottom.

We could have maybe taken it a little bit deeper into the innings and then cashed in.

But, to be fair, we were all buzzing in the changing rooms at half time with the score we had because we all know anything above 250 at Headingley is going to be tough to chase.

We face Durham at Headingley today, and they had a good win against Warwickshire on Monday, scoring 313 in 39 overs. Bring it on!

That’s the kind of mentality we have at the minute. We feel like we can beat anyone.

With the players and the attitude we’ve got, I think we can do good things this year in this competition.

Personally, I’m happy with how I’ve gone with the ball over the first two games.

At Notts I didn’t find my length that much during my spell.

But I haven’t played much cricket out in the middle this season, especially not with the white ball.

I bowled well in the one second-team game in at York last week. We then got rained off at Headingley against Lancs.

Going into these games with a few more overs under my belt would have been ideal, but I’m just happy to be playing first-team cricket again in front of a crowd.

Everything is perfect in terms of my fitness. There’s been a bit of soreness, but every bowler will get that. All the experienced lads will tell you, you’re probably never 100 percent right for every game.

But I bowled with good pace against Lancashire on TV, so I’m very happy with that.

It was a great atmosphere on Monday, and with the weather the way it was we were lucky to get as many people as we did in (nearly 5,000).

The later we go in the tournament, and with the kind of cricket we’re playing, hopefully we’ll entice more to come and watch us.

On Saturday at Notts, it was billed as the battle of the brothers with Joe and Billy Root coming up against each other. And it was good fun to be a part of.

I arrived at the ground with Matthew Waite just after Joe and Bill had arrived together. They both said their good lucks and left each other there.

There was a bit of chat when we went out onto the field.

I think Jonny (Bairstow) may have said to Joe ‘you’ll be happy with Bill getting a hundred and us winning, wouldn’t you?’. Well, Joe was quite quiet.

It was the same again when Bill came into bat.

We were all saying ‘right, how do we get him out?’ I don’t think Joe really wanted to say!

It was all in good jest and Joe came out on top in the end. That’s the main thing.