We’ve got one of the best seam attacks in the country at Middlesex, but at the moment it feels like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.

The pitches at Lord’s are so benign, as we saw again with the Lancashire game, that it’s very hard for the bowlers – nicks aren’t carrying and we’re struggling to get positive results there.

From a selfish point of view, as a batsman, I can’t complain – but it’s very frustrating for the team. That makes our matches away from home all the more important – and the Yorkshire game was a humongous one!

I couldn’t have been happier for one of my best mates, Stevie Eskinazi, to get his first hundred against Lancashire and then do even better at Scarborough.

Unfortunately we didn’t do so well in our last T20 game against Sussex. Paul Stirling went out and batted with a lot of freedom, but the rest of us thought we could do the same and it all went downhill from there.

I think we tried to go too big – we were looking for a total of 220 when 170 would have been a good score on that pitch, and we need to assess the wicket better.

Adding George Bailey to our line-up will help. He’s shown throughout his career that he’s got the experience to marshal the middle order and he doesn’t panic, so it’ll be good to learn from him.

We’ll be looking to come back at Richmond on Friday, when we’re up against a pretty strong Glamorgan side, but hopefully the crowd will get behind us and we can put in a performance.

I’m really excited about the start of the Test series next week – so far we’ve been treated to some pretty one-sided games this summer, but I think Pakistan and in particular their bowling attack will provide a serious test for England.

I’m certainly not the only one who feels some of the headlines referring to Mohammad Amir as ‘spot-fixer’ and similar things have been pretty unfair.

He was led astray at a very young age, he’s done his time and we move on – forgive and forget. Test cricket is all about seeing the best against the best and right now he looks a world-class bowler, so let’s enjoy the series.

And finally, congratulations to Ro-Jo on his call-up to the England squad. He’s one hell of a cricketer in all aspects of the game and no-one in county cricket deserves this more than he does!