What a great turnaround, bouncing back superbly from the disappointment of Arundel by securing a place in the Friends Provident semi-final and then getting our championship challenge back on track with a fantastic win against Durham this week.

Hopefully things will have got even better by the time this goes to print with a spot in the Friends Provident final after Wednesday's big game.

The semi against Warwickshire will be Stuart Clark's last game before he heads off for a well-deserved break and it was his superb opening spell that effectively won us the game against Surrey last week. Sarfraz, as he is known, has been a brilliant addition to the squad - besides his terrific contribution on the pitch; his constant and often inane banter in the dressing room has provided much entertainment. Fingers-crossed we may see him again later on in the year but in the meantime we have signed Adam Voges on a short-term contract over the Twenty20 period.

Vogesy' is pretty well known to a lot of the squad, he plays his club cricket at Melville in Perth where Paul Terry used to coach, Dimi plays and many of us have spent a winter or two. He should prove to be an extremely exciting signing as an attacking middle-order player who bowls useful left-arm orthodox and is brilliant in the field - not a bad combination for Twenty20 cricket Returning to the Surrey game, following Sarfraz's heroics (6-27) we successfully chased 181. Once John Crawley (55) had got us off to a good start, we were always on top of things in spite of a middle order wobble that saw a rush of late wickets. The victory, despite not looking as convincing as it could have, gave us that extra bit of confidence to take into the championship game against Durham.

Initially, things did not go quite to plan as, despite Michael Lumb's 70, we couldn't kick on from 137 for 3 and ended up 232 all out and suddenly found the opposition sitting pretty at 210 for 1 (Michael Di Venuto scoring a scintillating 124 at almost a run-a-ball).

In a brilliant spell, Warnie (6-83) and Chris Tremlett (3-63) rescued us and skittled Durham for 283. This later became 288 as five penalty runs were added, apparently for our batsmen running on the wicket in our second innings. As far as I know it was nothing intentional but presumably was brought to the umpires' attention by Durham - giving a strong indication about how worried the opposition were about facing Warnie on the final day.

It proved to be of no consequence as, thanks to Michael Brown (59), Dimi Mascarenhas (60) and Chris Tremlett's brutal 62 not out, we recovered from an extremely precarious position (98 for 5) to post 309 for 9. Rain on the morning of Day 4 led to an early declaration from the skipper and, as in the first innings, Warne (5-50) and Tremlett (4-47) ripped through Durham, after they had got away to a good start, to give us a win by 50 runs with 11 overs left.

An important win to keep us in touch with the top teams in a championship table that is extremely open and one that allows us to go into Twenty20 in much improved spirits.

On a personal front, it was disappointing to miss out on the last game, but as a batting unit we had been underachieving. Changes needed to be made and, unfortunately, I had been struggling for form as much as anyone.

Thankfully there are a good number of 2nd XI fixtures over the next month in which to try to rediscover some touch. With that in mind the lads headed up to Sutton last Friday to play Surrey in the first of the 2nd team one-dayers. Despite fielding a strong side and dominating the game in many parts we somehow contrived to lose by four runs Hopefully this will prove to be a minor blip as we attempt to win the trophy, as we did a few years ago.

In the more immediate future though, we will hopefully be competing for the Friends Provident Trophy following a successful semi-final... Then we start the Twenty20 season under lights against Kent on Friday. As a club, we're looking to go one step better than previous years and make the finals day at least - as always it'll be great fun and may give some opportunities to a few fresher faces. Let the mayhem begin!