By Josh Cobb
Team Captain
I CERTAINLY wasn’t expecting to come into this year’s Vitality Blast T20 competition leading the side, but it’s an exciting challenge and one I’m really looking forward to. The role isn’t completely new to me, years ago I captained at Leicester and hopefully I can lead from the front with my performances more than anything.
Coming into the tournament, it’s not about reinventing the wheel. We’ve had great success in the Twenty20 competition before, we’ve won the whole thing twice, so for me it’s just about getting a few different views and getting everyone enjoying their cricket and playing with confidence, losing the fear of failure.
We didn’t have the start to the season we’d have liked, but we’ve started playing some great cricket lately in the Championship, so there’s definitely an expectation to perform coming into the Blast.
The big part for me is getting people playing with freedom, going out there and expressing themselves and the skills they’ve practised. It’s a freshen up, a new lease of life and a chance to kick on.
We can take a lot from the way the England team go about it. Everything they do is with positive intentions and they go and do that day in day out. In T20 there’s less time to overthink it, it’s about backing yourself to go and get it done. Nine times out of 10 in T20 it’s about taking the positive option more so than taking it deep because before you know it you’re already in the last few overs anyway.
Not having Adam Rossington because of injury was a huge miss for us last year, having him back and fresh this year will be big. With him back at the top of the order with Richard Levi, together they’re a dangerous combination and if they get us off to a powerful start it’s going to put us in some great positions.
The support we get when we play at home is incredible, the atmosphere under lights is something I look forward to every year. Let’s turn the County Ground into a fortress that teams dread coming to. Get behind the boys, make some noise in the stands and let’s bring the trophy home for the third time.
Tickets are cheaper if you buy them in advance, they’re available from nccc.co.uk/blast now.
Josh Cobb