THE STEVE RHODES COLUMN

I THINK Lancashire played really well at New Road yesterday -- they got off to a solid start and, to their credit, they built a good base and capitalised on that towards the end.

They kept wickets in hand and if someone like Stuart Law gets through to the last six overs and has his eye in, he is difficult to contain.

I thought we did well in the first 40 to 42 overs, but they finished strongly and what could have been a 210 to 220 target was suddenly 250.

In these situations, you play as well as you are allowed to play and I think Lancashire had a pretty good game-plan which they carried out well.

I was also very disappointed to lose to Somerset, especially after going into it on a real high after beating Nottinghamshire in the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy game at Trent Bridge beforehand.

We managed to win the toss and chose to put Somerset into bat when the wicket was at its freshest and we felt it would dart around a little, so for them to get more than 400 was a disappointment.

We learnt a lot of lessons from that and we took that into our second innings bowling performance, which was much better.

In the first innings, we basically bowled too short -- the game-plan was to try and bring their batsmen forward and make it difficult for them to play.

We wanted to try and get them to drive at the ball, but unfortunately we bowled a bit short and then when we batted we nicked off a bit. It is difficult to drive a swinging ball early in the season.

To be honest, they bowled better than us and we played loose shots -- why we did that, I don't know.

We had a full day in the field and sometimes the guys can play a little tired. However, I wouldn't like to use that as an excuse particularly with the amount of fitness training the guys have done pre-season.

The positive to take from the game were Zaheer Khan's bowling and Daryl Mitchell's gutsy batting. Zaheer swung the ball back to the right-handers and picked up some good lbws.

The umpires have seen that he bowls wicket-to-wicket and hopefully word will get around that if the batsmen miss he is usually going to hit.

We actually did the opposite of the game-plan we had talked about, which is a bit worrying, but sometimes these things happen and as long as we aren't repeating this on a regular basis, I'm pretty sure we will come back stronger.

We are going to play most of our first XI batters against Leeds/Bradford UCCE tomorrow because I feel it is important to give them time at the crease in the longer format of the game.

We'll be resting Graeme (Hick) because it is an ideal opportunity to play one of the younger players. After his 10-wicket haul, Zaheer will also have a rest, whereas Matt Mason has a slight shoulder injury and won't play.