Well, what a disappointing start to the season to say the least and not the best game to reflect on in my first column.

An innings defeat inside three days of your first Championship game of the season is obviously not what we expected as we travelled up to play Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in confident mood.

The pitch was green and Keysy put them in after winning the toss and at 43-2 things were looking good. Amjad picked up both wickets and bowled well at the start of the innings but Hashim Amla played fabulously for them on debut – he was different class.

I don’t think he said a word all day and just batted and batted. Before you knew it he was on 40, and then 80, and then 120.

I finally got him stumped by Jonesy but we were made to pay for a few dropped catches – including two myself, one when Chris Read was on 40 – as they reached 396 by the close of play.

They added another 60 in the first hour of day two to total 456. Ryan Sidebottom then swung the ball nicely at the start of our innings and got both Joe and Keysy with only 13 on the board.

Sidebottom is still a dangerous bowler who should still be in the England set-up and things didn’t get a lot better for us from then on.

All out for 200 in only 62 overs saw us follow on and Keysy’s mood didn’t improve as he played on second time around. Tredders – opening in place of Joe who was delayed having a scan on his arm in hospital – was also dismissed as we finished on 51-2, 205 behind.

We were still positive, though, that we could get something from the game. The odd ball was keeping low and if we could have got 150 in front – a big ask but possible – then we still thought we could win. Even at seven down, if Azhar and myself – both attacking players – could have got tons it was possible but it wasn’t to be.

The result saw us have Sunday off and I visited family at Hinckley near Leicester – but we were back in on Monday working hard to put things right against Yorkshire this week. Sunday sees us open our Clydesdale Bank 40 campaign against Warwickshire and it will be good to play some one-day cricket with a bit of freedom.

Hopefully, I’ll have some better news to report on next week.