So far it looks like being an attritional summer’s cricket and, if we’re to have a chance of winning the championship, it’ll be all about putting in complete performances over four days.

We haven’t done it yet and that’s been reflected in our results so far, but I think it’s a positive that we’ve been pretty strong on bonus points, which wasn’t the case last year.

There’s plenty of talk about the changes with the toss and the pitches – when we were up at Durham it was as flat as a pancake – but you’re getting into dangerous territory if you start blaming the surfaces.

After all, it’s the same for everyone. There is always a way to take wickets and score runs and it’s down to us to work out a brand of cricket that’s going to win matches.

From a personal point of view, I’ve helped to get the team off to good starts, which is my job as an opener, but I haven’t got that really big score yet that can kill sides off. Hopefully that will come in time.

That’s certainly not a criticism that could be made of my opening partner. Robbo’s looked really impressive – he’s very talented, he works very hard and his scores speak for themselves.

Hopefully he can get an England call-up at some point and he definitely can’t be far off – Trevor Bayliss, the England coach, says he wants hundreds and Robbo’s getting them.

The great thing about Robbo is that when he gets in he goes on, so that’s something for me to learn from. For us as a side it’s incredible to have a bloke churning out hundreds week in, week out.

Although I played at The Oval in a T20 match last year and we had a pre-season friendly as well, it’ll be good to play a competitive four-day game there for the first time.

As a Middlesex player coming through, these are the games you want to play in, with the local rivalry, and this is another chance to find that complete performance we’ve been searching for.