We felt like we’d done enough this year to get through in the Royal London Cup – but it wasn’t to be.

In any shortened game, I think it can be a bit of a lottery and that was the way it panned out against Surrey at Lord’s. We had a great chance to grab the game when we had them four down for 30-odd.

But Ben Foakes and Zafar Ansari put together a good partnership and that was all it needed to chase down a pretty modest total. It wasn’t our day, but fair play to Surrey.

Overall, I think it was a good tournament – we won four and lost four – but, when you look back at it, we probably could have done something more in our game down at Taunton last week, so we live to regret that.

One thing I can safely say is that the defeat to Surrey will definitely spur everyone on going forward. You never know, it could be a blessing in disguise given our injury list, which is not ideal.

We’re not going to use the fact that we’ve lost some key players as an excuse – what we’ve shown so far this season is that whoever comes into the side, we stick together and keep competing.

On the positive side of things, the fact is that we’re still chasing two trophies – we’re top of the County Championship and we’re in the quarter-finals of the Twenty20, which hasn’t been the case since 2008.

So there’s a lot to play for and I can tell you that everyone in the dressing room is itching to get back out on that field and put Surrey under pressure in the Championship game over the next few days.

I’m sure it’s going to be a hard-fought contest, although we’re fighting for different things. We already know from our game at The Oval earlier in the season that we’re capable of putting Surrey under pressure.

With a full four days, I’ve no doubt that we would have won that game. Hopefully we’ll be firing on all cylinders and making sure we maintain our position at the top of the Championship.

There’s no point being top in August if you’re not still there at the end of the season. There are six games to go, a massive six games for us, and Surrey is just one of those.

Everyone’s got dreams of lifting the trophy at Lord’s, but it’s all about performing in those six games – that’ll be what decides it.